Bittu's First Birthday

It was with great excitement that we celebrated Bittu's first birthday on 15th April, 1983. We invited about one hundred and fifty people. This was in Srinivas, East Colony which was our first home. Now I cannot recognise the landscape around this place. Once in a while when I pass the main road there seems to be nothing but a jungle of concrete, large number of vehicles and a lot of souind and dust. Those day in 1983, there were some fields around the place. There was a lot of open spaces and many people did not own four wheelers. Most of the people came by walk and it was a nice gatering of friends. Mrs. Pundeer had helped a lot in making the arrangements, a large part of the cooking being done at home. Dr. Bandopadhyay had brought the birthday cake and Seema and Bharatans, Jagdish Gupta's and Taneja's our other dear friends were all there to share our happiness. The evening passed away and there was a lot of merry making though Bittu kept crying most of the time and wanted to be left alone.

I had still not found a permanent job and though bringing up a child was fun I wanted to do some thing else. I had found part time teaching in Stanely College and Saint Ann's College where I was teaching students of the intermediate clasess. There was a lot of comaradeship between the teaching faculty and what really disturbed me was the fact that in many colleges arts was not at all gicven importance and all the emphasis was on the science subjects. It was as if all the left over stuff came to arts. There was a total negelct of sciences. I continued in these tow coolleges. In these days creches had not yet become popul;ar and hence I had made an arrangement with a family wjhere I would leave Bittu at 8 o, clock. I would then pick him up in the evening and as we walked back to our home I would buy some vegetables . Somu would reach home by six thirty and then we would play with Bittu for some time till he slept. There was no Telivision to disturb us and outing meant going to the movies. We really saw some very good movies during this period, One flew over the Cook's nest, Van Rayan's Express, Great Escape, Wild Geese, Ben hur. Bitu would accompany us to the movies and after some initial interst would fall asleep.