bhai
i remember bhai had an extensive collection of match box cars by the time he was five years old. his mom and dad would go out every evening and bring a new one for him (guilt payment?). gradually - he had so many of these little cars, trucks, vans and planes that we began to play 'airport'. we would lay out the planes in rows - the terminal - then we would have a car park for all the people who had come to see their loved ones off. we were very imaginative children.
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he had a real mechanical car wash (and this was year 1977-78) for those little cars. there was no water - but it had two belts that would push the car in through one doorway and out the other.
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he also had a dump truck - if i am not mistaken my mother had someone bring it for him from abroad. it was not so big in size but i remember i could sit in the back comfortably. bhai would push the truck (with me sitting in the back) and drop (pour?) me off over the sand in the front yard.
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years later, during one of their winter vacations in dhaka, bhai and i created a board game. it was called thunder pigs (a la thunder cats) but we had our own characters, and yes, they were all pigs. we made up the rules so that we a had cohesive, functional, and quite smart game. bhai is a phenomenal graphics artist - so he created the characters. we glued a sheet of paper over a chessboard where bhai drew a course that the game would follow. we created the game pieces by covering up carom pieces with paper and drawing the character images on them.
one afternoon - bhai's little sister got mad at us and shred the board game to bits.
i remember while in dhaka bhai could eat very little of what we usually have and had to rely on chocolates to make it through the day. one afternoon when i went to find him in the tv room he had just unwrapped a van hauten candy bar (white chocolate) with a glint in his eyes. but he saw me come in and broke off half of his precious ration and offered it to me. without my asking.
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i remember gmb braiding his hair because he wanted dreadlocks that winter. he has an overszie head. gmb had a tough time managing the braids even with his thinning hair. when done - they looked limp, spindly and pathetic. on the day they were to lay the foundation of their house in uttara, he had to wear a tupi for the milad but nana's tupis did not fit him at all. so finally, gmb said: "uff!" and tore the seams of one to shove it down on his squarish head.
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one year he was trying to grow a goatee. but his beard wouldn't come in on the sides of his mouth. he stood for long in front of the mirror in my mom's room and then said : gotta get rid of this, C - i look like a fag. these were new words for us back then.. to taste them in our mouths, swirling them around like wine tasters. words like boongs, niggas. we were much too young for the colors of the world.