Memoires of Another Day - Arun Roy Mukherjee.

It was possibly sometime in 1937. I was about four then. My father was then posted at Kharagpur. We had a red coloured very big two storied house with a big walled compound in the front. Beyond that there was open space for quite a distance and I could see the maroon-coloured trains passing either from our veranda or from the windows of our 1st floor bedroom. While we were there my Didima along with Rangamama (Montu) and Finchumama came there. One day Finchumama swallowed a one paise coin. It was quite big in size, almost like our present one rupee coin. Nobody except Didima knew about it and she did not disclose it to anybody. Next morning, however, it came out without any fuss and then Finchumama told everyone of his latest adventure. A few days later we all went for a pilgrimage to Puri. I still remember that from early morning onwards "Pandas" came inside the train compartments and went on asking my father about his name, name of his father and fore-fathers, native village name etc. They were carrying heavy hand written books where they had all these details recorded. There was a competition between the "Pandas" to catch a pilgrim. One Panda who was known as ‘Sare-sat Bhai" found the name of somebody from our family and he claimed us as his "Jajman" and at that all others dispersed. We put up in a quite big room on the first floor of a building near the temple. My father went out to make arrangements for offering pujas at the Jaggannath temple and also for the Mahaprosad for all the days we stayed there. He came back, after making all arrangements with the help of the Panda with a big bunch of bananas in his hand.. The bunch was very big and must have had atleast some sixty bananas. My mother took it from my father and while she was going to put it in a corner, a monkey suddenly came in through the window and tried to snatch it from my mother. My mother was not at all willing to let it go and the monkey, a very big one at that, was also adamant. Then the monkey suddenly slapped my mother hard on the cheek and snatched it away and jumped out of the room.