It has taken me decades to understand the significance of the space that grandfather left behind. A rectangle, not more than four feet by six feet, in the shape of a queen size four-poster. One that had seen better days.
Grandfather loved spaces, carved out from the good earth, the larger the better,. He took long strides on leather-shod feet looking outwards from beneath his fine cotton dhoti, pointing towards grassy, sandy or cement-covered spaces, walled or reaching freely for the horizon. Spaces that he either already owned or intended to some day.
When I was around four or five, he began telling me stories from his life. He also told me other stories plucked from books and then flavoured with his own additions and changes to the original narratives, as well as those that he had made up himself. He spent his nights writing, sleeping only when it was almost dawn and then made up for it with a two-hour nap after lunch. Grandfather wrote in longhand on red cloth bound copy books, similar to those used by accountants in shops and offices. He had taught me a few poems written by him. These were children's poems, but he wrote political satires too, and poems on social issues. He had written a number of books and had them published by obscure publishers. His stories and articles, mostly concerning minor players of the freedom struggle, had been published in equally obscure magazines. Still, these were enough to make him an intellectual in a small town. He was a committee member of various cultural clubs and organisations until he became too feeble to attend.
Before he became paralysed from hip downwards, thanks to a series of strokes that he suffered, he was quite active and being a typical Bengali bhadrolok in his tastes, he preferred to buy the vegetables and fish himself. I would accompany him in the mornings, before I was old enough to attend school, and afterwards during Sundays and other holidays. I also went with him on his monthly rounds of rent collection from his tenants. Grandfather striding forward with the help of his carved mahogany walking stick. And me, small and frail, almost jumping at every step to keep pace.