It was a warm summer afternoon of ‘90. Summers in Bhagalpur have always been scorching and people rarely venture out in such heat unless it is for an essential thing like medicines, water (no the story precedes the time when water was sold in bottles!), a calamity or to trade comic books! 90’s were a different era and kids didn’t suffer from any ADHD nor any remotely similar neural ailments. Where was the time for all that when one had to run at least a few miles to borrow comics from the bookshop and once done reading, exchange it with a friend. Or had to shout out at every friend’s door and beg his mother to allow him to play!
The neighbourhood where we lived during those days was called Bank colony. However, there was quite a fair mix of people from other professions. Bankers (of course), Accountants, Lawyers, even a retired judge. It also had families who loved their domesticated cows and who let them loose in afternoons for a casual walk. The colony was pretty well laid out with criss-cross lanes, so the owners were confident that their roaming cows would not go astray. These casual bovine walks, however did cause stinking nuisance on colony roads.
So it was a warm summer afternoon. I had finished reading the latest Nagaraj comic book twice and was planning on making a good deal out of it. There was a power cut that day, quite a regular thing in the ‘90s, which had further inebriated Ma and Didi deep into their afternoon siesta, while Bhaiya was busy with his books in his room. I was pretty sure no one would notice if I sneaked out of the main door. Slowly I got up and made my way through the main door and was about to open the gate when I stalled. The main gate had started creaking at the hinges since the previous week. The sound was caused by the grill of the gate rubbing the bolt that was holding it against the wall. Ma had already asked me a few times to put oil in those hinges to soften that irritating creaking sound, while I had always ignored it. My logic was that the sound was acting as our call bell so why bother! That same logic was now holding me from surreptitiously escaping.
After weighing the alternatives, I decided to bump up the adventure quotient of this errand. I looked around to ensure no one was watching and like an expert athlete jumped over the compund wall, only to land on a freshly dumped, warm cow dung. Cursing my luck and the cow owners, I grudgingly rubbed my chappals against the grass nearby. I had lost a good 10 minutes in the process and was worried if someone at home would notice me missing! That thought jolted my spirit and I rushed towards Mishtu’s house.
Mishtu’s house was roughly a hundred metres from mine. The house was landlocked from three sides by equally imposing walls of adjoining houses and had a narrow alley on its open side. Mishtu’s mom, Sengupta aunty, was a strict disciplinarian and during summer would not allow us to wander until it was late afternoon. And in all possibility, she would report at the HQ, if she found me loitering around.
Ergo the plan was to avoid her at all costs and close the deal without her noticing it. As I reached Mishtu’s house, I peeped through the cracks of the huge grey gate. Aunty was sitting on a chair in the verandah with the most ubiquitous handheld device of that era - palm leaf fan; power cut must have interrupted her siesta. Human behaviour is so contradictory and unpredictable. The same stimulus caused one set to go in a deeper slumber while it caused the other to lose sleep. This was getting tougher by the minute but I had made up my mind, so there was no going back. Before she could see me, I quickly ducked below the level of the compound wall to avoid her alert roving eyes and almost crawled to the narrow alley next to the house.
In that alley, I thought of a plan which of course sounded brilliant to my 9-yr-old self. Without wasting any more minute, I set on executing the plan with a jump and clutched on to the ledge of the house’s compound wall. Yet again like an expert athlete, using my arms, I moved towards the part of the house that was closer to Mishtu’s room. Once I guessed I was closer to his room , I pulled myself up to bring my eyes just above the level of the wall. Thankfully Mishtu was sitting near the window and he saw me. His eyes widened with shock and he gestured that he was coming out. I hurriedly signalled him to come out in his backyard as there was an impending threat in the verandah.
“Wow! Nagraj aur Shankar Shahenshah! How on earth you got hold of it!”, Mishtu was unable to hold his excitement as I pulled out the raison d’etre of the errand, that was tucked in my shorts. On learning about the terms of the trade,however, he returned back to his normal self.
“The seven Crystal Balls for this!”
“Last time I had given you Pratishodh ki Jwala in exchange for The Red Sea Sharks, remember! The first book in Dhruv series is so rare you might not get it in Granthalay even”, I was trying all the tricks on my friend who had introduced me to the world of Hergé’s Tintin.
“Ok fine, will get it”, may be Mishtu got the sense that if he haggled any more Aunty would come to know about it.
He came back with the book and a small oblong diary.
“This is the “Big Fun” diary that I got from Manish bhaiya’s shop after I gave him 300 runs and 10 wickets’ stickers that I collected ”, Mishtu boasted. It was my turn to be disheartened now as I had been trying to collect the stickers for a few months now. After flipping through the diary, I tried the last trick up my sleeve.
“But you had told Aunty that you will not have any more bubble gums!”
“Last week a relative had come with some Big Fun gums!” - so lame an excuse.
“And you got all these stickers from that lot. Anyways, if you let me have this for a few weeks, I will not tell Aunty”, I had played my final card.
In a matter of a few minutes, a very successful trade was executed in my favour. I ran back home, ducking at critical junctures and jumping over a compound wall, in that order. It was the pinnacle of all comic book trades with a Big Fun diary as bonus, that the world would have ever seen and as a consequence it was really difficult to wipe the smirk off my face for three straight days.
I have been a fan of Tintin ever since and now in possession of the entire series, thanks to D. The Big Fun diary that I probably never returned was quite interesting too and had statistics of many international cricket players. It had facts like wonders of the modern world apart from some fun trivia, like longest non-technical word in English.
Though I lost the diary a long time back yet that one word was stuck in my memory - Floccinaucinihilipilification. Time had erased the definition of the word but as destiny would have it I had another encounter with it today, while reading a short-story by Satyajit Ray. I looked up the the word and was actually amused at the definition, it meant ‘nothing’! Amused because that word brought back that summer afternoon of ‘90 and for me Floccinaucinihilipilification was anything but that!
