Our neighbourhood grandfatherly figure, who we used to call dada, was a charming gentleman. Light shone gently on his face when he sat on a plastic chair, near our front gate, basking in the winter sun, grinning toothless at people passing by. “I am just as good as you are,” he would say, when I asked how he was doing. He would often regale me with stories of his childhood in Guwahati. Tales from a hundred years ago. He had once asked me if the old Bengali High School was still there. He knew Panbazar, long before it became today’s Panbazar. He used to live near the Machkhowa Idgah. His father was a doctor at the government hospital nearby. He would tell me stories of metre gauge trains and how people used to cross the mighty Brahmaputra – first by metre gauge and then by hopping onto the broad gauge train. “All that is in the past now,” I would tell him. Guwahati is all grown up now. Once he told me a remarkable story. Initially I thought he was imagining it, but I cross-checked the facts. The years matched. It was as true as night and day, death and life, and as a story can ever be.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyOne night, his father, a doctor, then serving in the Great War (yes, the first one), was trudging his way among the desert ruins to check on patients groaning inside tents while the war wounded were crying desperately. Everywhere, there were only signs of desolation. Some laid unconscious clinging to bare life. In that vast desert, the good doctor went about treating those he could with basic medical tools and presence of mind, but others were gone.Suddenly, he heard a distant tune in Bangla, wafting from somewhere, carried by the desert wind. Bhatiali – a boatman’s tune – mournful and nostalgic across the desert. He listened again as he applied gauze and sewed another wound. It was real as the tents, as his patients and his nimble life-saving fingers. He followed the song from one tent to the other, crossing hundreds of patients as he walked like a fervent discoverer of lost lands. Finally, inside the darkness of a moonlit tent, he saw someone singing his heart out as others watched him spellbound. It was ethereal and magical, in the gut-wrenching spectacle of agony that only a war can bring. He clambered on and listened. They became great friends – the doctor and the singer, who was also a poet – one blessed with practical attention and the other with intuition. Medicine and music inside a war zone with death always prowling. The kind of friendship that cannot be shaken even by an earthquake. The doctor went back to treating patients along the river in Guwahati. The singer went home too, wherever that was, and became the greatest poet of his land. They called him Nazrul. His songs gave birth to the distinct genre called Nazrul Geet. Today, he is revered as Kazi Nazrul, the national poet of Bangladesh.But his heart was always in two places – his beloved Bengal as well as Bangladesh – his feet once here, then there. That is another story much like the turgid river itself. Nazrul would often visit his doctor friend in Guwahati and together they would spend long evenings singing. The family would join in. They would eat together, laugh and enjoy what life gave them. This story is not mentioned in history books, for those more often deal with kings and abstractions. It was not in any of the childhood tales I had heard from my grandmother either. The doctor’s son, who used to listen intently to the war stories, was our neighbourhood grandpa. When I saw him walking slowly with a cane I stopped to chat with him. He told me that his body was a machine and his heart was run by science. Like a good storyteller, he knew when to pause and when to move on.The tall gentleman passed away this year, carrying his tales with him. Where do stories go once people leave this earth? I’m not sure how many people know this story of the unlikely friendship between a doctor and a poet that spanned countries and borders, and a river, torn by war and peace. A friendship dangling between life and death. A friendship to treasure even when the protagonists are long gone, even as the storyteller has left. Today, I passed it on like an heirloom. Maybe one day it will be recorded somewhere outside newspaper headlines and boring textbooks. Or maybe it will not be in the archives but in your minds somewhere, whenever you think of an unlikely friendship. Maybe somewhere you will also tell others of this strange story over a dinner, while munching nuts and savouring a drink at a winter fireplace.For M.K. Sen, dada.Amlanjyoti Goswami has written three books of poetry, A Different Story,River Wedding and Vital Signs, published by Poetrywala. River Wedding was shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi award. Published in journals and anthologies across the world, including Poetry, The Poetry Review, Penguin Vintage, Rattle and Sahitya Akademi, he is also a Best of the Net and Pushcart nominee. He grew up in Guwahati and lives in Delhi.We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.Read the series here.