Kuna was born as the last and sixth son of his parents. Besides the eldest, his brother, he had four older sisters. Those were the days when the large family was more of a norm rather than an exception in India. Parents also did not find it difficult to support a large family where wants were limited to the bare necessities of life.

Having two square meals was perhaps enough and if one had a bare minimum of clothes that was considered enough. Consumerism had not arrived even in the urban areas, not to speak of rural hinterland, the pristine purity of which was unpolluted.

A sense of primordial bonding, filial ties and sibling bonhomie permeated the family. Mother earth produced enough to feed a hungry stomach and nourish a growing body. Being youngest in the family, Kuna (meaning the little one) was showered with bounties of infectious affection and love by his parents and siblings.

He started going to the village school and learnt vernacular alphabets on the earthen slate. There was no mid-day meal during those days in the village school. So Kuna had to rush home during recess to have food with his mother.

All the brothers and sisters were gifted with a high degree of native intelligence, the sisters in particular were smarter than the brothers, and the brightest was Kuni, immediately elder to Kuna. Their father was a humble employee of the state transport department.

Although his salary was not enough, the produce from the land which he had outsourced supplemented his monthly salary. Life had been sailing smoothly for the family until a pall of gloom descended when their father passed away prematurely. The family was rudderless, which affected Kuna’s education adversely.

With his father’s monthly salary gone and with irregular monthly pension, Kuna at a tender age started farming the land instead of giving it for share cropping. As his sisters stayed back in the nearby district town for their college education, Kuna stayed in his ancestral home and looked after his widowed mother.

The mother and son ensured that the sisters’ education faced no impediment. As a teenager, when boys of his age indulged in boisterous pastimes, Kuna started shouldering heavy responsibilities like arranging finances for higher education of his sisters and getting them married. It was a gargantuan task.

The strong-willed Kuna did it with rock-like determination and firm resolve. While he himself didn’t have the benefit of an education, he left no stone unturned for the education of his sisters. His efforts and his mother’s deeds bore fruit when Kuni, his elder sister, passed her M.Sc degree with flying colours from the top university in the state and was selected for a Ph.D with a notable fellowship in a premier university in Delhi, where subsequently she was appointed as a lecturer in a prestigious college.

Coming from a humble background fighting all odds, it was like a dream come true for Kuni when she started taking classes. It was as much the triumph of her dogged determination as it was India’s democratic ethos of providing a level playing field and equal opportunities.

Kuna’s other sisters in the meanwhile  raised families, built fancy houses in town, bought cars, sent their children to good schools and colleges.

Kuna, however, remained the same, living in the thatched house without electric light and looking after his mother. He has no regret about anything, remains happy and contented. He would spurn any overture for help from others, while religiously discharging his social and familial obligations.

All the family members along with their children would congregate on occasions such as death anniversaries of his father and of his mother who had by then passed away or during Durga Puja. Kuna would enjoy the family reunion with a sense of fulfillment.