The Michigan Assassin, Angkar Wat and Rajdhani Express

Writing the other day about Anandamela, the Calcutta based children's magazine that significantly influenced my childhood thinking and writing, brought back memories of three stories that I held dear since 1982/3, when I essentially learned to read.

Anandamela publishes an omnibus of stories, poems and novels every year during the Pooja festival. So my house had the 1980 edition of that pooja edition, which had three stories that fascinated me. I must've read that collection 30-40 times (even though my parents are big readers and collectors of books, there weren't that many Bangla books appropriate to my age, so I read and re-read the ones I had).

1. Angkar Wat: It was a poem, so I never paid that much attention, about the construction and destruction of Angkar Wat. I've always wanted to travel, but the visa was a problem. It's on my list.

2. Rajdhani Express: For the uninitiated, Rajdhani express is the 48 hour train journey from Delhi to Kolkata. The novel was a murder mystery solved by Gogol, who accidentally sees the incident, and is being hounded by people on the train. I've always dreamed of what it would be like to travel from Delhi to Kolkata on Rajdhani express. Someday, I hope.

3. The fight between Stanley Ketchell vs. Billy Papke: So the story was about the iconic match between boxers "the Michigan Assassin" Stanley Ketchell and "the Illinois Thunderbolt", Billy Papke. And it did a blow by blow account of the 1908 match and describes what it's like to want something so bad that you are ready to sacrifice everything and die. In my mind, I created a whole image of what boxing would be like for people who need to win. Somehow, Raging Bull, The Boxer, The Hurricane, Ali, Million Dollar Baby and Cinderella Man failed to satisfy my thirst to visualize what a desperate match must feel like. I haven't watched the Rocky films though.