Cycle of Cliches
We wished that he chewed, as we could then, unobtrusively invest our time in our favourite classroom pursuit, small talks.
So here was this man, Mr Jagannath Singh, dark-brown complexioned, always wearing a white shirt, and making a timely appearance (sharp at nine in the morning) at our house to gorge on twelve pieces of smoking hot, deep fried puffed breads – luchi – and a bowl of spiced up potato fries – aloo bhaji – with Deuta. He drove a red Maruti 800 that had a framed and freshly garlanded photo of the monkey-god, Hanuman (pronounced Ho-noo-maan) stuck on the dashboard. Except for his name, Nisim, Biswa and I didn’t know anything about him initially. He spoke Assamese and Bangla in a