Choto mama

 

Walking along the Harbour,

I thought I saw a familiar face;

‘Choto Mama!’ I shouted

And immediately felt silly.

Wasn’t he a character in a movie?

 

Too late - the old gentleman looked back –

Glacial white curly hair

Wrinkles, that same moustache

And a slow, deliberate walk

That only age and time distils

 

I apologised, but wondered

Of the similarity that led to the confusion -

He smiled, and drifted

While I wondered

Why did I even shout out?

 

Perhaps somewhere,

I was still stuck

In yesterday’s Kolkata -

In that living room

Listening to the Aagantuk

 

Spellbound by his knowledge

That yearning to understand the world

And that wistfulness

When Choto Mama leaves again

Making a pit stop in our lives

 

And yet, a flame of hope

That in him lived

The Wanderlust in all of us;

At least someone could have wings

To break the shackles of middle-class life

 

Disappearing yet again

To the far south

In search of new cultures

‘This time, you will come

To visit me,’ he asks of his grand-nephew

 

Here was I years later,

Having travelled this far myself

Waking up,

Remembering a masterpiece

In a warm winter’s noon

 

Suddenly I feel old,

Did the Satayki Babu

In each of us grow up?

Could we live up to the promise

Of not being a ‘kupmanduk’?

 

I look around,

Blue skies, the red sandstone cliffs

Of Baranagaroo.

Could Choto mama find here

Altamira’s bisons in a red hand cave?

 

A different thought emerges –

What if he lives in each of us,

Still curious, wandering

Wondering of the wide world

Salt Lake, or Sydney matters not

 

What if, then

We were not the kid who grew up?

What if, we were Choto Mama himself?

Still here, in Warrane

 

Discovering new Gadigal lands every day

Finding old stories,

Of the Thylacine - if not a bison

I look up - Barangaroo disappears,

A sliver plane flies away in the blue skies…

 

18^th July, 2026

Inspired by Satyajit Ray's final film (1991), Agantuk which follows the return of the enigmatic Choto Mama, a lifelong traveller whose curiosity, wisdom and love of distant cultures challenge conventional ideas of success, education and belonging. His young grand-nephew, Satyaki, is captivated by his stories. As Choto Mama departs once again on another journey, he invites Satyaki to visit him someday—a quiet ending that leaves behind not just a farewell, but the promise that curiosity itself can be an inheritance.