Ice Cubes on Desert Sands

 Summers. North India has started to burn. Heat has broken the record of many past decades. Temperatures above 40 in the last week of March! Something seems to have gone wrong with nature. Heat emerges with bumper buoyancy. Hot dynamics grip everything with such force that all will yell prayers for the Monsoons.

In the desert state of Rajasthan things must be even worse. The sand as the birth soil isn’t too attractive. It may have 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 navigate 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 just marginally more than their homeland. They have thorny bushes there; here there are some semi-arid varieties like neem and acacia. And that changes the world for the best. It’s a shift from the worst to the best. 

They feel that 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 a heart of gold. You can never think ill of others even if you sound a bit impolite,” the elder one nails it.

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

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

“There is no better deed than feeding the hungry. It’s a direct holy feat. 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 which people usually give them and throw to the stray dogs also. Every time 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 it right. It is available in every household here. Ice is a big luxury to him. He comes from burning sands. Pitchers burn like hot oven there. They drape sack-clothes around pitchers and pour drops of precious water to prevent it from boiling. He already has many ice cubes in his water utensil. He opens the lid and checks out to see how far these have melted. He is concerned. The ice is 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 which are crying for ice. She has to get it.

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

Ice that is just ice to her, is something more to him. He has seen fire in life, the fire which seeps into everyday life in the desert. Ice has a bigger meaning to him than anyone else around here.

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 just once a week there. When he saw the pond outside the village, he straightaway jumped into it like a mad frog,” 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 realise that people run out to count drops of rain on the sand at his native place. So water is a treat to him.

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