Pomegranate seeds in a dung cake

He is looking deep into the well of nostalgic memories. “What does August 15 mean to us? It only means that rains are almost over. A mark of change of seasons. Similarly, January 26 means the end of the real cold,” he gives his peasant interpretation of the Independence Day and the Republic Day.

And the anecdotes follow. His dim eyes are looking back to enliven some memories buried deep in the layers of his brain.

Nobody grew vegetables as a cash crop during those days. It was called dum kheti, named so after a caste legendarily popular for their leisure ways, no physical labour, who survived on singing folk ditties and smashing drums, and that too on rare occasions like when a son was born around. In 1952, it was his family that sowed peas, and not just sowed the seeds but chartered a new path. They had a huge dung disposal pit, where they would dump basketfuls of dung taken out in the morning, as the buffaloes, bulls and cows defecated freely through the night in the bark. A faculty with a domesticated cattle is that it can continue eating through the night, and letting out the waste from behind. And this faculty served as a manure factory during those simple times. In the dung pit, they would pour bucketful of cattle urine. And over months and years it turned into most fertile manure. There was hardly any artificial fertilizer during those days. So they sowed the peas. And not only sowed a vegetable, they sowed the prospects of a new farming way. The pods grew this long, he is indicating from the top of his middle finger to the lower middle of the palm. It even comes as some crude gesture. Some peasants laugh. Even he himself gets conscious, then makes it more polished. The pods had 22 grains, can you believe it, I myself counted these, in fact I learnt counting with those pod grains.

Sugarcane was as thick as this much, he has sprawled his fingers and thumb in opposite directions to accommodate the maximum girth. And what did you need to grow the sweetest wonder? It was just human effort, manure from the dung pit, and sprinkling alkaline soil from the alkaline waste land outside the village. You just chew one sugarcane stick, drink water on the village well, take a bath in its cool water, and mind you, you had to run to your house to avoid dying of hunger.        

He is then telling about the legendary wells among the farms. Their waters were so sweet that you never missed sugar during those days. Then he is telling how everybody was so healthy, so healthy in fact, the healthiest of today would still fall short of the weakest of those times. He is telling of legendary strong bulls which pulled carts that a tractor would struggle with. He tells of buffaloes whose bursting udders would compete with a whole dairy’s output. He tells of mighty farmers who could pull a whole cartload by themselves, in case the bull went on its knees, and still pat the animal on back as if it was his son who needed some help.

Well, it seems the best is long past. Gone with the wind.

******

He never knew that his craze for cricket will turn into a dream that will be kept alive somehow. Growing up in the seventies and eighties, the madness would get into his soul on dusty pitches in the playground outside the village. He could have done batter in studies if not for this obsession with the willow-lashing game. But what did the countryside urchins know about cricket, except Kapil’s famous feat at the world cup, and that two people run madly between the stacks of bricks facing each other from some yards, with a dusty land in between, somebody throwing mindlessly, and someone swinging the tattered bat still more mindlessly, and still more people running madly after the cork ball which had all the possibility of taking whatever course it preferred to take. Well, this isn’t even the A of cricket. It starts many notches further. It’s a very technical game having thousand nuances and mind-games. So it was more of baseball cricket which gripped rural India during the seventies and eighties and it ate countless hours as much as it ate all other sports. Having spent a major portion of his youth in baseball cricket on dusty, holed ground, he got into Delhi Police as a constable. He kept the flame alive, and gave the best of affordable facilities to his son. Settled in a town, sent him to coaching, pushed him to Jim, gave him expert diet. The boy rose above the level of baseball cricket to play cricket, but not beyond the city club level. He isn’t dejected. The dream is still alive. Such big innings are played across three generations at least, he says. I have got him to a level where he will be able to guide his son to at least national level, he has the patience of the Pacific Ocean in just being there for centuries. Well, it’s more suitable to keep the dreams alive. Across generations, in fact. Then they stand a chance to get fulfilled.  

******

China is rabble rousing boundary issues with all neighbors to retain its CPC dictatorship. Keep them believing that there are foes outside, who have committed crimes against the Motherland, and they will forget about their own irritation at the ruling party’s manipulation of their lives. But there is a danger that it will snap like in the USSR. Russia went boom to bust from 1917 to 1991, 74 years of an experiment, which is inevitably bound to fail. Let’s see how far China can manage the experiment which started in 1949. It has been 68 years. Even they may not have as much time as they think. Things may just crumble up. Only reason is, the communist model carries the seeds of its own destruction. Right now Chinese leadership has to have more and more enemies, real and imagined, to keep the people hooked onto the idea that has failed everywhere else in the world.

Too much of laws, rules, regulations, legalized forced discipline creates a facade that goes too perfectly to soar too high. It then crumbles. Perfection rarely sustains. That's why communist societies fall apart. Like a castle of cards. It crashes. Like it did suddenly in Russia. To survive, a society has to have its pitfalls, imperfections. The facade doesn't go too high. It sustains. There are plus and minus which cancel out each other. Oh, the glorious imperfections of democracy. That's why it thrives. In the same way, the well managed, rigid facade in China will crumble. It will collapse. Well, unless they voluntarily introduce some imperfections themselves, some traits of democracy, to make it pliable, some allowance of mischief, some humour, some criticism to bring down the upper stories of the facade which has gone too high. It won't fall then.

******

Ever wondered why so many Muslim boys take to the self-destroying path of violence? Polygamy may be responsible. Multiple wives, many children, family strife, children grow beyond the axis of love and affection required to groom a loving and caring newborn. Long before you love the world outside, and become responsible to keep things in order, you need to have your own quota of love, your share of affection, your portion of trust. In polygamy you get tested. You get isolated when you need your near and dear ones the most. You end up competing instead of being loved and love in return. A polygamy family lacks the positives of a cohesive unit, nurtured by the sweet shower of parental and sibling bonhomie and affection. Life becomes a struggle at the home itself, the point you start from, and where it should be stable to groom a healthy personality. Your father abandons your mother at his mere fancy, gets a new wife, your mother either sulks as a secondary object in the same house, or leaves to either rot in poverty, or remarry, and you with your real brothers and sisters, get pushed around the corners. How will a young sapling take roots? Childhood gets uprooted. All religions have adapted to get attuned to changing times. Muslim clerics and theologians should encourage monogamy. It will sow the seeds of trust, love and stability in the family, the point a child begins his journey. Islam means peace and monogamy will help the real spirit of Islam as wished by the Prophet. With peace and trust in families, Islam will become the great religion it is meant to be. Just have a look at the data.   

******

Watch your words, your sentences and speech. If you take a stock of the overall pitfalls of your life, your words, not the real bloody punches you gave out, might be the spoiler. It’s not usual to have a war. Even real fights and bloody noses are exceptions. These come rarely. In between most of the time we are blabbering. So buddy it’s the words that carry the risk to land us in testing, awkward, painful situations. And of course words take us to the best moments of our lives also.