FOR SEVERAL YEARS now, Opu has shared a warm friendship with old Norottowm Daash Babaji. Babaji was a fair-skinned, handsome old man, always cheerful. He lived in a simple little hay-roofed hut in the Ganguly neighbourhood. He disliked loud gatherings and enjoyed his solitude, so he wasn’t often seen at the Gangulys’ temple courtyard in the evenings. He was a gracious host, however, and over the years, Horihor often visited him at his home. He had been taking his son along ever since Opu was a little boy, and that is how the friendship between the boy and the old man had begun. These days, Opu was old enough to visit Norottowm Daash on his own. Upon reaching the hut, he would call out: ‘Grandpa, are you home?’ The old man would come out eagerly and lay down a woven palmyra-leaf mat for Opu in his veranda. ‘Welcome, my grandson,’ he would always say. ‘Come in, come in. Have a seat.’

Opu was painfully shy almost everywhere except in his own home; it was almost impossible to get a word out of him in company. But with this placid, simple-souled man, he forgot all reticence. Their relationship was sunny, unconstrained and full of delight—much like a child’s relationship with his friends and playmates. Norottowm Daash had no family; he lived alone in his hut. A fellow Vaishnav girl from his own caste came in during the day to do his domestic work for him. So Opu could sit with him and chat uninterrupted till late evening, telling him about his own life and listening to Norottowm Daash’s stories. He knew, of course, that Norottowm Daash was older than his father—older, perhaps, than even the village elder Awnnoda Roy. But the difference in ages had never affected the ease he felt in the old man’s presence. Indeed, it was his extreme seniority that had made Opu think of him as a kindred soul—as the sort of person one could open up to. His sense of embarrassment and wariness always fell away in the flow of their talks. He laughed heartily in that hut, and talked freely about those things that he dare not bring up around other grown-ups for fear of being labelled a rotten, overripe child. Besides, he cherished the regard in which Norottowm Daash held him. The old man often told him, ‘My child, you’re my Gour. I’m sure Gour had looked exactly like you at your age—as auspiciously handsome, as pure, and with just such kindly eyes . . .’

Anywhere else, talk like this would have deeply embarrassed Opu. But to Norottowm Daash, he would merely grin and say, ‘Then it’s time you showed me the pictures in that book!’

So the old man would bring out ‘that book’—his cherished copy of Prembhokti Chondrika: The Light of Love and Faith. It was a dearly loved book; he read it often in the solitude of his hut, enchanted and absorbed. It was, however, a bit short on pictures.