The memory of my past life,
with all its ineffable fragrance and sound, became a living present to
me, and my blind eyes could not tell me I was wrong. I went back, and
lived over again my childhood. Only one thing was absent: my mother was
not with me.
I could see my home with the large peepul trees growing along the edge
of the village pool. I could picture in my mind's eye my old
grandmother seated on the ground with her thin wisps of hair untied,
warming her back in the sun as she made the little round lentil balls to
be dried and used for cooking. But somehow I could not recall the songs
she used to croon to herself in her weak and quavering voice. In the
evening, whenever I heard the lowing of cattle, I could almost watch the
figure of my mother going round the sheds with lighted lamp in her hand.
The smell of the wet fodder and the pungent smoke of the straw fire
would enter into my very heart. And in the distance I seemed to hear
the clanging of the temple bell wafted up by the breeze from the river
bank.
Calcutta, with all its turmoil and gossip, curdles the heart.
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