Ice cubes on desert sand

Summers. North India has started to burn. Heat has broken the record of past many decades. Temperatures above 40 in the last week of March. In the desert state of Rajasthan things must be even worse. Sand as the birth soil isn’t too attractive. It must be having its nostalgia, but on a day to day basis it appears a curse. Ask the ones who are born there. So many people come out of Rajasthan to avoid the burning cauldron during the summers.

Two lanky boys are moving across the streets of this Haryanvi village. Haryana is a semi-arid state. But for somebody belonging to the desert state, semi means almost full: full with life; full with bread; full with water; full with green trees.

They are tall and thin. They have migrated from the desert state. Necessity has pulled them out of the sand like water flows from higher level to the lower one. They have to beg. But begging has its own share of pitfalls including reprimands and harsh words.

“Why don’t you study? Why don’t you work?”

So they have put the saffron sail cloth on their poor boat. To sail safely. Holding onto the winds of faith. Their clothes are soiled. But the saffron sashes around their necks indeed cover a lot of holes in their personas. They expect to be taken as wandering ascetics. They have even mastered the artful words of bringing blessings to the house they stand in front of.

The woman chides them the moment they knock against the rusty iron gate. They but decide not to be deterred by the initial rebuke. Stealthily they steal glances at the two small cars parked in the front yard. These are old cars. But to them a car is a car. Hummer or Maruti 800 doesn’t make any difference.

So they continue with their blessing words of good fate, long life, endless prosperity, and more. It’s morning and yesterday it hailed and rained a bit to take temperatures a bit down. To them it seems like a land of perpetual rain and prosperity, although it rains marginally more than from their homeland. They have thorny trees there; here there are some semi-arid varieties like neem etc. And that changes the world for the best. It’s a shift from worst to best.  

They see the woman cannot cross certain limits to turn outright abusive and threatening. This is the chink. They have to prod their way in.         

“You have hard words but heart of gold. You can never think ill of others even if you sound rude,” the elder one nails it.

“What do you want? No money I tell you! I can only give you some flour,” her voice mellows down.

They let their foot further in. It’s an opening.

“There is no better doing than feeding the hungry. A direct holy deed. God sees it instantly,” they take their chance.

She seems to be awaiting God’s attention on some front, so agrees. They barge in. It’s a spacious house with peeling plaster and mundane furnishing like you see anywhere in a village in Haryana. To them it’s an abode of prosperity. They sit down on the unplastered brick-laid floor in the courtyard.

It’s too early for the family to have their lunch, brunch or whatever. So she makes chapattis for them. The vegetable curry is already done. They can see the chapattis are coming straight from the tava, not the stale leftovers from the previous night that people usually give them and thrown to the stray dogs. Every times she comes to put another chapatti they are ready with more words of blessings from the God.

The younger one asks for ice. They must be having refrigerator he has guessed right. It is available in every household here. Ice is luxury to him. He comes from burning sands. Pitchers burn like hot oven there. They drape sack clothes around these and pour drops of precious water to prevent it from boiling. He has already many ice cubes in his water utensil. He opens the lid and checks out to see how far these have melted. He is concerned. It’s melting. He wants replenishment.

“Please give me ice,” he is literally pleading.

She laughs at him. “It’s not that hot this morning. There is cool breeze,” she says.

But he looks at her with eyes that are crying for ice. She has to get it.

As she pours the cubes from the tray into his utensil, she can see the twinkle in his eyes.

Ice that is just ice to her, is precious to him. He has seen fire in life. Fire that seeps in everyday life. In desert. Ice has a bigger meaning to him than anyone else place better than him.

She notices it now. His clothes are also wet. Not dripping exactly, but he must have been completely drenched thirty forty minutes back.

“What happened? Did you fall in water?” she asks.

The elder one is laughing. “Water turns him crazy. Hardly any water back home. We take bath almost once a week. When he saw the pond outside the village he straightaway jumped into it,” he is laughing.

Water that is just water to her, is luxury to this boy. She tries to fathom the reason for his ecstasy over ice cubicles and pond waters where buffalos waddle, but fails to understand. Little does she realize that people run out to count drops of rain on the sand at his native place. So water is luxury to him.

Like most of us fail to understand that the things that seem dustbin cheap to us might be luxury to so many others. That a broken doll on the garbage heap, a shiny wrapper, a single wheeled broken toy are still items of luxury to many others. If we do, then we won’t begrudge about the problems in our life.