The end of the road ......

The world is never a nice place to live in. Because there is always a beginning and there is always an end. Dada retires. Jumbo calls it a day in a matter of days. And two people whom i have loved and respected a lot are no more.
This is not a post to rant about the exploits of Dada and Kumble. Of them a lot has been said, and their respect due for so long has been paid. It just hurts me to think of the fact that only when people are gone do we really remember about them, how great they were, how inspiring they were. Till the time they are there, they are taken for granted.
Dr. Chinmoy Gupta. People do not realize how great he was( atleast those who knew him). For me , I have seen him ever since i have been able to remember things. He was a dadu i had who used to go to the clinic every morning, and when he used to come back from the clinic, he used to bring this pack of little sweet balls of coloured mouri logenze inside. It was something he did without fail, and i used to get my quota of mouri logenze even without asking for it. He was a doctor. Not a famous one in the city he lived ... Howrah. But as family doctors are he was more than a life line for those who used to come to him for medical advice. because he was a doctor but above all because he was FAMILY. Not many people know what this word means, and very few realize the gravity this word carries and even fewer live up to the expectations of this word. Only a handful people i have seen have surpassed even that level. He was one of them. Mamadadu as i called him was my fathers maternal uncle. We went to his house every time we visited Calcutta without fail.And whenever i went there i got my mouri logenze. And he used to tell me that he used to get it from a place called Mourigram. I really believed that there was a place like that. As I grew up , the demand for mouri logenze subsided as did the supply. But i really was surprised to find out one day while returning from Kharagpur to Howrah that there was indeed a place named like that. Mamadadu was always a taciturn man whom people treated with respect. He was also a great listener. Anyone could go to him with medical problems, and he would give a patient hearing to all of them. All he said was HMMMM..... and once you were done, he would tell you the solution. People followed him blindly, listened to him religiously. He was in fallible, never having a wrong diagnosis in his credit. Yes i might be prejudiced, but given my age at that time and my knowledge of the number of people in the family who used to visit him, i have never seen him make a mistake. Whatever he told worked wonders, from my grandmother to my sister's son. For people who have read "the Doctor's Word" by R.K. Narayanan, (read here) he was a similar kind of a doctor.
Till i was young, he was a sort of demigod to me. More than the love it was a kind of worship.
Then i saw his human side. Once i reached college it was one after noon when we had our lunch that he lamented to me one of the greatest regrets in his life. He was there when my grandfather died and inspite of being a doctor he could do nothing, and helplessly watched him. It was as if he was trying to come to terms with that fact and perhaps i was the only one he could communicate that. It took a lot in him to come out with that and my father says that for 40 yrs Mamadadu never said this to him. When i told him i wanted to go for higher studies he was happy too. he wanted one in the family to study. He was an academic person and it disturbed him a lot when people did not pay adequeate respect to academics. And he was one person who remembered this for he asked my father why i went for a job after completing my masters. As i left for my PhD i called him up and told him I would be back after 1 year, and i would come to visit him. He told me he would wait for me.
Not any more.
A lot of unsaid things ran between him and me.
The baton has passed .
The race will continue.........

I wanted to talk about two men. Somehow i am not being able to continue. I will write in my next post.