Over The Moon At Chandipur

While we were at the Ramakrishna Mission Residential College, we, the the then second-year English Honours pupils, went for an ‘educational excursion’ to Chandipur. That was September 2003, a fortnight or so before the Pujas and…as it turned out,- roughly a week before the declaration of our undergraduate Part-I results.

After virtual bargaining for conveyance concession, it was fun – embarking on seemingly miles-long expeditions on hot sand before reaching our coveted Bay of Bengal; making mincemeat of our accompanying teachers’ pockets with a ‘chicken-roti’ dinner with bites at green chillies and onion; night-time rendezvous with our teachers on the Panthanivas lawn; mimicking our teachers, in front of them, on our boulder ‘amphitheatre’, adjacent to the beach; early dawn stroll down the beach bathing in the golden beach light - as if exploring the Mars.

On afternoon one I managed to get myself lost. It was a heavenly experience firstly to gaze at the sea stretching beyond horizons; the roaring waves, crowned with glowing phosphorus were as if calling me. That was only the second look at the real sea for me who had been long in city pent. Secondly, it was only a shade less heavenly to walk barefoot through seawater flowing over my feet…So far so good, in fact, great, so much so that the mild rebuke from our teachers, when I finally got back to our tea-talk, hardly bothered me.

While the ever-jovial Sibendu managed to pluck a dead sea fish out of the Bay, one of our teachers(I dare not name him – I still fear his serio-comic forehand slaps!), on the final morning, went to the sea, with a mug, to have a bath….And I, along with Pritish, time and again during our stay, did feast our eyes on a Sonali Bendre poster in a pan stall.