Christmas at Silchar

This was my third Christmas in Bangalore and as usual it was not that great. Yes…we did have celebrations in the office on Christmas eve (good they declared holiday on Christmas at least!!!!!!!!!!!) but nothing can match the joy of celebrating Christmas in my sweet home at Silchar…….thanks to the enthusiasm of my father. We are not Christians but my father makes sure that Christmas is celebrated at our home in our own sweet self styled way. We decorate a cross made out of bamboo and place a picture of Christ along with the cross in our Puja room. We invite all the kids of the neighbourhood to join us for the evening prayers. In the evening, we light the candles before Jesus, say our prayers and distribute sweets among the kids. Usually, a kid is dressed as father and he sprinkles holy water all around the house.

In our schooldays, Christmas time used to be the most exciting and happiest time for us.Our annual exams would generally be over by November end and the winter vacation would immediately follow…. A vacation of almost 45 days…..a vacation which we enjoyed to the extreme. Those days, in our lane we were a gang of about 10 kids, almost of the same age group…….we used to go to school together, play together in the evenings, laugh together for no reason, fight at the silliest things….and most importantly, we used to get together with full spirits for Christmas celebrations. Well let me introduce you to our gang members… there was Mou didi (Moutushi Paul)… presently she is an engineer with BHEL….Devon(Deboprosad Paul)… presently he is doing his Btech from NIT, Silchar…… boro misti didi (Lopamudra dutta) who is doing BE from Pune..Shivani didi(Debjani Purkayastha) who is practicing in Guwahati high court, her brother Rajdeep(Purkayastha), persuing MBA in Delhi…, her elder sister Narayoni didi(Narayoni Purkayastha) who is married now and blessed with a kid…….Shivam (rabijyoti Bhattacharjee) who is a content developer with Infosys…and then there was me and my siblings….myself Misty (tanaya choudhury)..am a Sr. software engineer with Wipro Technologies, my brother rajon (Sarbajeet choudhury) and sister Titu(Saswati Choudhury)..both of them are persuing Law in Assam university.
Though each member of the gang was distinctly different but there was one thing that was common between us..ENTHUSIASM……Courtesy this enthusiasm, we would start making preparations for Christmas from the very day our exams got over… Making the decoratives, the crib, rehersing for the programme to be staged on the Christmas day and what not.We used to tear off the cardboard from the old copies and make stars out of these….we used to decorate the stars with glitters …..christmas tree, santa claus, the streamers, baby Jesus and mother Mary..everything we used to make and decorate on our own with the minimum resources we had……There was an innocent joy in all these…….a joy which is impossible to find now despite all our cravings and efforts. Ours was a talented group, I must boast….we used to write the songs, set the music, direct the play, prepare the welcome speech and etc etc. Our father, as I have already mentioned, encouraged us a lot and used to oversee all our preparations and correct us if required. We would reherse for long hours…making sure that we perform our best on the Christmas day. And then there were those endless debates and discussions on what dresses to wear ……on what role each of us would play in the drama and etc etc. I remember how everybody wanted to be in the lead roles and so role allocation was indeed the toughest job…there was always a risk that whoever would be a given minor role might actually pull out of the team) On the day of Christmas Eve, we used to set up a stage in the courtyard……two wooden cots placed side by side and fully covered with some nice carpet…we used to get a structure built with bamboos and decorate the same with different bulbs and our self made stars and streamers. Queer to think now, we used to write the invitation letter with the aid of carbon papers just to get the feel of a printed one . We used to distribute these among our neighbours , relatives and friends.We used to get chairs from every house in the lane and set these all in front of the stage for the audience. On the Christmas evening we used to have such huge crowd gathered that the chairs would always fall short but the people never seemed to mind standing and watching our function. And why not, all of us used to get involved with such excitement and enthusiasm…lighting candles before the portrait of Lord Christ, prayer songs, Christmas carols , drama on the life and teachings of jesus, magic show ..every single thing used to be done with the greatest perfection and passion. Every little cheer from the crowd would fill our little hearts with joy…..every single clap would encourage us to perform even better!!

Well that was Christmas for us in our childhood. So many years have passed by….we are all grown up now…..busy with our career at different places of the country….may be not having enough time to wish each other “Merry Christmas”…….but definitely we all miss those golden times spent together at our very own Silchar.