Me and Agartala

A request came from my wife to write something on myself.
I've started to write but don't have any concrete idea what I need to put down. Let me write something that comes up.
I've grown up in a very small place called Agartala (most of the people will ask me whether is from South India and I need to reply that it's actually from Tripura, a small state in North east. And then they'll say “Oh, I see. This is from Assam". Again I need to tell them nope, this is another independent state. I think their first guess of South India is from my complexion. They know their guess will work.) Anyway, I always was hesitant to say to people about Agartala as they don't even know the name of such small place. But in any case I'd tell them. Also I'll mention that I need to fly from Calcutta (at that time it was not renamed as Kolkata) and that would give an extra privilege. Most of my friends never flied in their life till that time. They'd travel by train only.
I remember that once my father was coming back from Delhi after his NCERT conference and when he was coming out of rickshaw, I thought that my life will really be great if I can go to Delhi at least once.
The most entertaining sports for me was playing marble. At that time whoever will be available in that gali (the area), we'll play as a group. I remember it used to start from 7 o'clock n the morning and go till 6pm till the sun was there. After dark we're not allowed to be out of our home. And this was a big complaint that I was grumble, all my friends are there out of their home till 9pm and we're the one not allowed.
By 7pm we'll finish our dinner. Kiran was our maid-servant. She used to take care of us, me and my elder brother. So once the rice was cooked, we'd go to her and finish our dinner. I can still remember that at 7.30pm "Dhrubojyoti Mukherji" would start reading the Bengali news and we'd finish our dinner and ready to go to sleep.
We had played all kinds of games in Bijoy Kumar School. All of us (almost 20-25 people from our chowmuhani) will assemble there and start playing our games. It could be cricket, football or volley ball or chor-police or ....
Dadu would be there sitting in his chair and see around if any one of us is passing by - he'd call me whenever I pass his house. He used to give me coconuts from his trees. And I would ask for "jambura", it was tough to get this. If we touched his bamboo made wall around his house, he'd shout "gelo amar tatti bera" (the bamboos will break).
Also I remember that we'd come to meet in the road side at 10.30 in the morning and 4.30 in the evening - the girls' school would start and end at that time. So all of us would be there to see the pretty faces.
The elderly people would also come there to join us and generously distribute their knowledge, although none of us would be interested to catch even a single word from that speech.
How can I forget the carom - it's the crazy game that you can even think of. Once we start we'll never leave the board - we'd play 5-6 hours non-stop. In this connection I remember one person called "Rankhal" - he was a poor chap and was very talented. He was angry too. People were scared of him as he used to get very angry, at any time. But he was very friendly to me. We'd play a lot of carom in the "KBC" club room. Once I reached home from my engineering college, I saw people playing a memorial cricket tournament. When I asked I was told that it was in the memory of Rankhal as he was dead. I can still see his face.
He went with us to Teliamura for a cricket match and was caught in the third man area. He was very upset that if would have put a bit more effort, it could have gone for a six.
When I look behind today, I can see what a lovely childhood period I had. I can't provide that to our son. I really miss that. And today I'm no more ashamed to Agartala, infact proud that I came from such a lovely place.
So many things to share - may be some other day.