A mauled shoot

 

Amid continually fevered perceptions and pell-mell severities of modern life, you don’t have to cross seven seas to do something purposeful and creative. There is an unperturbed spot of repose within. All of us are endowed with it. Don’t get petrified. Don’t flinch looking at the tumult. Abandon that haggard and agitated look.

In the brick-paved yard, there are gaps where peepal saplings try to get a foothold. A solitary shoot is well trodden over. There is an effort of ‘life’ to raise its head and expand from every nook corner. The mauled little sapling is a wonder of nature, a fertilized seed in a bird-drop getting a space. It needs your help to retain its wilderness and freedom. If you don’t care, it will be trampled to dust again. It needs your support to become a majestic tree some day.

I keep an eye for such orphan saplings and pick them up, half-squashed and plant them in nursery bags. They heal and recuperate with twinkling agility. Why be weary and inarticulate if you cannot break bigger mountains to be a newsmaker? Dig your toes in small openings. Beaming and broad will be your joy. Salvage a little shoot of plant life from getting crushed on a busy pathway or a yard or roadside, plant it in a nursery bag, give it a little dose of love when it’s a child and see it maturing into a handsome tree. Then serve yourself papaya slices, toast and piping hot tea tucked away in a corner at a café to celebrate your victory. Ensconced in your celebration, all sweet-faced, rub your hands in anticipation when your tree would have shade for the humans and nesting place and fruits for birds.   

Uncle Satbir

 

As a boy uncle Satbir had lots of issues against going to school. So much so that Grandfather would hoist him up like a fodder bundle and dumped him in the class. In his childish keenness uncle Satbir would prefer to be out of the school. That was his first choice. Grandfather was once a teacher and his injunctions about life centered around school and mashakkat, hard practice, on mathematics primarily. So, despite uncle Satbir’s protestations, it was foreordained that he had to go to school and love mathematics.

Then some mysterious nerves tweaked in his brain and uncle Satbir grabbed the mathematical sinews in their entire minuteness. The teachers would be found to be inadequate to handle his mathematical wizardry and unrelenting queries. With a jingling enthusiasm uncle Satbir cracked the IIT entrance examination. It was a commendable feat for a village boy who loved wallowing in the pond holding the tails of buffalos. Uncle studied aeronautical engineering at IIT Kanpur. But the fleeting quotients of the mathematics of his life found it a perfidy to be stuck up in an institution. Despite doing really well in studies there, Uncle stood by his unadulterated scruples and ran away from the august institution. Grandfather got a letter from the premier engineering college that his ward had gone missing. With a sly lightness, Uncle simply vanished in thin air. Maybe he found institutions as a kind of ferocious and hideous iron collar around his neck and broke free.

After five years of absconding, my father tracked him in Yamuna Nagar. When Father reached the spot, Uncle was the undisputed king of accounting in the truck union office. Father saw him on a rickety desk, a panama hat on his head, a bottle of local liquor in front, an account book open and the mathematics wizard expertly settling the transporters’ sums. It was very difficult to extricate him from the brotherly grasp of burly Sikh drivers, who thought the truck union would fall to pieces without its young, three-quarter IITian.

Back home, despite the outrageousness of his deed, he was convinced to enroll in B.Sc. degree course at the local college in the town. Uncle resplendently declared that he would top the university. And he did. Meanwhile, he made life impossible for the professors, who would fold hands and ask him to enjoy life outside because he knew all that they had to teach. Uncle walked and talked mathematics. It made Grandfather pardon all his goof-ups and sins against education.

A friend of Uncle was struggling to clear his matriculation exams. There was a chance to join police but the matriculation certificate was the roadblock. Uncle loved the idea of appearing in matriculation exams as proxy for those who won’t pass even fifth class exams of their own. He got a few of them pass with first class degrees. Unfortunately, as he appeared for this friend he was caught. Uncle always thought that he did the job with an incorruptible conscience because he never took monetary remuneration for writing exams for poor students. Anyway, he was caught and a case lodged against him. He had his very own rallying points and said no to hire any lawyer to fight his case. He appeared before the judge and gave his declaration:

‘Your Honor, I know I have broken the law but I have done it for a good cause. This friend of mine is very poor. He has lost his mother also. A matriculation certificate would get him a policeman’s job but he cannot pass it himself. I did it for him. Had I taken money for it, I would have accepted my crime.’

Wonder of wonders, the judge let him go with a warning against repeating the same in future.

A marriage proposal came and Uncle just shook his head that meant neither ‘yes’ nor ‘no’. In any case, they got him married without pondering over too much about the purported meaning of the shake of his head. After six months of conjugal experiment, Uncle again heard the lugubrious echo of freedom from all institutions. Amidst the engulfing tumult of protestations by his young wife, Uncle declared he cannot live with her. When Grandfather protested against this declaration, Uncle flatly countered, ‘She can stay in the house but I will leave!’ And he vanished like he had escaped from the clutch hold of the IIT college. He ran away. This time almost forever.

Even while on the move like a nomad, he would have many admirers involving both institutions and individuals. Mathematics wizard as he was. After a lot of escapades for freedom, he opened an IIT coaching institution at Dehradoon and raised a fantastic breed of IITians, many of whom settled abroad. He did all this with a limping leg and continuous, niggling pain. 

Destiny seemed to hunt him with a grievous and fatal precision. At the age of forty, he met an accident while riding a scooter. He was dragged by an unknown vehicle and the scooter’s handle tore through his stomach, exposing the whole mass of intestines. He held his organs tightly in his grasp till help came and only then fainted. At New Delhi AIIMS, critically short of staff under the onslaught of the entire country’s critical cases, he lay waiting for some doctor to be free as life slowly crept out of him. Death peeked over perilous precipices. But Uncle was braced against the final fall. He called a junior doctor and told him, ‘Roberts you have to do this operation. Don’t worry, I am not going to die. You will simply be an instrument of my survival.’ The surgery went for almost twelve hours. And as he had promised, Uncle survived.

He carried a huge line of stitch marks along his abdomen. From the same accident, he carried a leg injury that won’t heal. A kind of gangrene ulcer. It was almost raw flesh around the shin. Look at it and you would shudder with horror and pain. ‘The pain that would make you cry is normal for me now,’ he would say. It would need multiple dressings in a day. He got accidental hernia also along the stitching in his abdomen. It protruded with a big growth but he could not be operated because of the non-healing nature of his leg injury. So Uncle had to tie himself in a belt to hold his hernia growth.

He tried all forms of medications to cure his leg and finally became an expert homeopath in search for the ever-elusive cure for his injury. He muzzled up the classic Homeopathic treatises and in fact became more knowledgeable about Homoeopathy than the professional degree holders. He kept on searching for some miraculous concoction of herbal medicines that would cure him. He always had a firm belief in a solution because mathematically every problem has a solution. This was the toughest problem that kept him busy for the last twenty-two years of his life. And carrying all this burden of physical pain, he raised a very successful IIT coaching academy that produced hundreds of IITians.

But no institution was strong enough to hold his formidable and raw sense of freedom. He made the institution and after a decade broke it himself. One of the teachers was almost like an adopted son to him. He stayed with Uncle with his very courteous and diligent wife. It was a happy family in every sense of the term. They made a huge house in the luxurious foothills of the Doon valley. The academy was doing perfectly well. They had big cars. Then one fine day, Uncle again broke loose from the shackles of normalcy. Like a child suddenly scatters the sand castle it had so laboriously erected on the beach, Uncle suddenly swiped and closed the system. He parted from the son-like teacher. He divided the assets, gave them everything and kept just the residence with him. The academy was given to the teacher who had served him like a son for a decade. When they left the house, the teacher howled with pain and struck his head against the wall. It may seem an ominous fall, egged by the spasmodic blasts of destiny, but I know it was more of Uncle’s own choice well deliberated as a mathematician.

Uncle stayed all alone in his palatial house during the last four years of his life. A housemaid stayed with her family in the servants quarter. There was a pair of Labradors to fill up whatever was left of the home in the brick and cement structure. During these four years, Uncle would go to Mumbai for a week every month to give lectures at prestigious academies and would return with an attaché case full of money. He was after all much in demand. From Delhi airport he would hire a taxi to reach Dehradoon. And during one of such journeys, Uncle reached home finally, due to cardiac arrest, at the age of sixty two.

Trummp

 

Trummp arrived with greenish pomp and reddish glow on its nose. The guy had a talismanic greed. Give it anything from fresh salads to cooked kadhai paneer, it would sumptuously eat whatever it saw you eating. The kind intention to keep him swiftly glided into an arduous task. When we got him, we held him in high consideration. But all respect for him lay hither thither just within three weeks. My temper raised its stick with an iron-shot end. Joyous countenance scampered away. Enormous and formidable was its appetite. All this while he was riding the high and mighty horse of gluttonous enthusiasm. I helplessly let out guffaws of desperation.

Well, Trummp was a parrot. An ascetic lives in a hut by the canal outside the village among the fields. He arranged for a community feast in memory of his guru. He had invited me so I went there a bit in advance while the prasada we still being prepared by the cooks. The parrot was leisurely patrolling the cooking area, nicely gobbling boiled potatoes, cooked pumpkin, puris and ladoos. They tried to shoo it away but it would take a little flight and come back.

The ascetic proposed that I take it. Agreeing to the proposal, we procured a cage and it was ceremoniously carried into the house. There was lingering, delectable charm about the bird. It was fat and lazy. It had philandering appetite. Its only motto seemed to be, ‘You have to give something to eat the moment you see me’. The cage tray would soon get flooded with its drops. It was pretty vocal about its eating aspirations and hungry assertiveness. It was almost paranoid about its eating habit. Deprive it of anything that you were seen eating and it would try to break the cage, the only time when it showed some physical exercise. The rest of the time, it was content to just sit on its perch and scan any opportunity to eat something.

I knew that it was a female because the red collar on the neck was missing. Still I treated it as male, in fact christened it as a male so that I could use cuss words on its person to vent out my frustration. It’s imperative to maintain decorum and one shouldn’t use ill words against a lady bird. So I imagined it to be a male rascal.

One day, I had put the cage under the sun so that Trummp could sunbathe and get vitamin D. A male parrot, vow what a sight with its red collar around neck, came screeching for companionship. He saw the pampered fat woman in the cage and immediately fell in love. Trummp also looked at it with a friendly regard. But it didn’t look too eager for free air as if it was enjoying a kind of sad enlightenment inside the cage. The passion of the love-blinded parrot was fiery and spiraling on the other hand. My compulsions were wearing thin under the constant bombardment of its demand for more and more varieties of food.

The parrot in love returned the next day also as the lazy, fat ladylove contentedly sunned its feathers. It would have been foolish not to see it happily married and lead a happy married life. After that it would be the husband’s duty to see to his wife’s culinary tastes. The first choice should be to transfer the responsibilities—instead of cutting them altogether—if you find them too heavy to carry on.

I opened the cage expecting the fat woman to go flying with its lover instantly. But it won’t come out. Food was dearer than any lover in the world. The lover was hovering around with measureless mirth. I had to literally prod out the lady’s prodigious and imperturbable laziness. The shy bride finally came out and the groom encouraged it to take a bit of flight for conjugal bliss. I immediately shut the cage and ran away with it lest the bride got its groom into it also to make him a ghar jamai.

Well, sadly though, one cannot survive with a luminous conscience and radiant uprightness during the present times. Anyway, hope they had a nice married life. Moreover, a few days of freedom are better than years inside a cage.

Pa's childhood experimentation with beedis

 

Father started experimenting with smoking beedies while he was in class three. Grandfather notched up many devices with squirming moralities to teach him a lesson. Father was tied to a wall peg like a tiny bale hanging in air against the wall. He was made to sign a declaration that he would never smoke and sign it 1000 times in the presence of witnesses. He was hoisted in air and dropped multiple times on the ground as a deterrence. He was made to draw lines on earth with his nose, each time saying ‘I won’t smoke!’ Teachers were asked to be extra punitive. While all this was being done, everyone around was smoking hookahs. So the tactics failed and Father happily continued smoking beedies into his seventies. We also tried smoking on Pa’s leftover beedi stubs. But it was bitter and the thing never appealed to our taste.   

Village marriages of the bygone era

 

We eagerly looked forward to weddings at our village during childhood, especially the girl weddings. Cheap, various-colored sweets looked like divine desserts in those days. But then a girl’s marriage would mean the groom’s wedding party coming to the village. It’s very difficult to decipher the entire set of monstrosities unleashed by the sloshed wedding party members. It was a special day for them under patriarchal rules. So even their most goonish conduct was viewed as funny at the most. They were entitled to the entire set of follies expected from a sloshed person.

They would mistreat the music band members, kick the groom’s horse, wallow in mud, shout profanities, make lewd gestures and make passes at the entire village womenfolk. Save the groom, whose face radiated some semblance of grace for getting a wife, the rest of his party would be a perfect example of ugliness and puerilities. It was a kind of unutterable indulgence that chucked out the entire village’s peace.

No wonder, thrashing the groom’s party before seeing off the bride wasn’t an exception. They would unleash a firmament and the helpless villagers, cumbered with fathomless woes, would forget the sublimities of welcome offered to the party a few hours ago and pounce upon the evil. It was a gigantic necessity to do so in most of the cases.

The drunk revelers would do snake and monkey dance to the drumbeats and throw coins and even 10 rupee notes in the air. It would enkindle a stampede among the onlooking village boys and they would rush to pick up the coins. Then the impervious baratis would beat the culprits who had picked the coins. And the beaten boys would take revenge later. As the buses and other vehicles started to go back, they would throw stones to break the maximum number of windowpanes and rival heads if possible.

Once we felt well recompensed when we hammered a wooden piece into the exhaust pipe of a wedding party bus and it won’t start causing a lot of anxiety and inconvenience among the foes. This slimy novelty was hurtled in their face because one of the boys from our group had been slapped because he had caught a 10-rupee note mid air that was hurled into the skies by a wildly drunk barati in celebration. So the bus won’t start for a long time and once it did there was a hail of stones. That’s how weddings were celebrated during our childhood in the eighties of the last century.

Pet-pals of our childhood

 

My brother loved pets during childhood. We still remember those dogs, cats and birds. A few of them stand out. Kalu was a tiniest, skinniest puppy that was bought for fifty paisa from a neighborhood urchin by my brother. It was touted as a bad bargain by the elders as it was almost on the verge of death. It kept its neck tilted as if as a declaration of misery and sickness.

The village school was nearby and we would come during the recess more to check if Kalu was still around and less to have a hurried lunch. But Kalu was a hard life in a frail body. Mother would go to the fields to get fodder and keep it chained in a wall’s shade and would return before the sun crossed over and baked it alive. Once she got late and found Kalu stretched out under a merciless sun, struggling for breaths. She thought these were death pangs. But once in the shade and some water dropped in its mouth, it made a comeback and never looked back.

Kalu wasn’t an all-black dog, it was speckled black and white and we chose black from the binary scheme of its coat to name it as such. It came to be a sturdy dog in its youth. Childhood frailties don’t always mean the same in youth. It was now a big dog and well behaved in manners. But it would lose its temper slightly at the sight of a farmer in the locality.

One day, in anger the farmer poked at Kalu with a hayfork. Kalu lost one of its eyes. Father worked at Delhi with Life Insurance Corporation. On his return at night, we shared the catastrophic episode. We had never seen Father leading a quarrel with his little pack. But that day he led all of us to the farmer’s threshold and all of us delivered a handy condemnation and wholesale remonstration. More than Kalu losing its eye, the fact that we the educated guys went for a verbal fight made the news in the village. Kalu was nursed back to health and performed well even as a one-eyed canine. It looked very cute with its squinting look. But then one day, it followed the ladies, Mother being one of them, going to the fields. It involved a kilometer of walk along the tar road. There it met its end under a truck like most of the village dogs did during those days.

Village dogs went to the roads to die. They actually ran into the vehicles to escape from them. A few other pet dogs met the same end. Rikki but was a different sort. It was a large, handsome brown and white dog. It looked a canine rockstar from all angles. It always created a timorous creak in the hearts of all the female canines. There was an ominous fluctuation in the jealous hearts of rival males as Rikki wooed almost all the females in the entire village.

After its love episodes, it looked solemn, drowsy, almost venerable. An ineffable moonbeam lurking on its august face. Its love-sorties took it to all corners of the village to shower its dreamy gaze at all its fans. Jealousy of rival dogs knew no bounds. A dozen of them banded together and ambushed the handsome Romeo. The destiny’s gale was blowing against Rikki now. It was a frightful and shadowy attack in the fields outside the village. The gusting billows of their anger poured out their immeasurable agony. We were crestfallen as it was declared dead in the attack.

Almost daily pestered by my younger brother, Father came very close to buy an eagle from old Delhi. My brother had been carefully deliberating over the menu of mice and frogs for the esteemed hunter. But then the prayers of our mother were heeded and the hunter bird didn’t arrive. But many pigeons and parrots did arrive, most of whom would die and my brother would mourn the death of his pet birds with loud tears.

Once there was a pair of little Australian parrots in the house. One of them flew away one day. My brother led a frantic search operation after a nippy discussion with his pals. They led their search party across the fields surrounding the village, peeked into hundreds of trees, and shot queries about the runaway parrot at the farmers from the neighboring villages grazing their cattle.

Imagine trying to spot a little bird among thousands of birds chattering among thousands of trees across many square kilometers. But a valiant marksman is undaunted by the unfavorable winds. The relentless search operation made it a local news item. Who says efforts go waste? You always stand a chance of finding even a needle in a huge hayrack if you are diligent and persevere in your effort. Someone informed that a boy at the farther end of the village has a beautiful parrot. My brother and his band sneaked over their yard to check. There it was. Sitting on a stick with its leg tied. The boy was condemned as a wicked and impious brigand, smuggler and poacher (all together) and the bird was retrieved.

Pushed by the benevolent gaiety of childhood, we once saved two hare babies from the fields. But in reality, we had kidnapped them from their house. We customized a big wooden chest as a cage. They grew fabulously. But then they started quarrelling all day and emitted stanching white urine. They had to be given to a bigger pet lover along with the huge wooden chest, sack of feed, a few rupees and plenty of cajoling.

Given their unbecoming ways, they did rounds around the village. Finally, an enterprising one ate them. We raised a protest at this but he flatly told us, ‘See, you weren’t the owners. I was the owner at the time.’ ‘But they were pets for playing,’ we tried to reason. ‘For playing, yea! We tried to play with them. But they were so angry that bit the finger of my grandson. Left it bleeding! So there was no other use. Moreover, there were guests at home that day and we were drunk. So made use of them.’ We demanded back our huge wooden cage contrived from a chest. But to him it belonged to the last occupant. So the question of ownership got muddled along the series comprising all the owners along the line of occupancy across the village. So we lost our claim. We tried to retrieve it by stealth. It was too big for being stolen over the wall of his yard. It crashed and Bablu, the most muscular one in the squad, got a blue toe. We had to run away to avoid a beating.   

Once a cat ate mama squirrel, leaving three orphaned finger-length squirrel babies sticking on an unplastered wall. My brother used all his boyhood expertise in catching them and raised them as their single parent. A slim plastic eyedropper, having a very thin nozzle, was salvaged from the waste heap. The squirrel kids would have a semi-fluid made of milk and crushed bread. They would hold the dropper’s tube with their front paws and cutely drank the nourishing drink. It was a successful rearing. They grew strong. We left them on a neem tree where they grew still bigger and enjoyed the sweet-sour offerings of this world.  

While the village boys hit the hard cork ball to neighboring field around the school playground, my brother once hit upon the scheme to fish out three handsome, full-grown parrot lads from their hideouts in the school’s roof. They were just a few days away from flying and their beaks gave him a bloodied taste on fingers. I would say it was outright kidnapping. They were force-fed for a few days and raised lots of squeaky protests in the room. Then luck smiled at them. Mother inadvertently opened the door and they had their first free flight. It amounted to a real flight to freedom.

A cat mom was once staying in our barn with her week-old kittens. Grandfather turned a cat-killer for her sake. Well, we siblings turned very fond of the kittens. But then a burly male cat came at night and broke one kitten’s neck leaving us fuming for revenge. We were ready for it the next night. Father had his hockey stick and Grandpa had his well-oiled stick. Grandpa was in his late seventies at that time. The rascally cat gave a tough challenge and would have escaped over the high wall if not for Grandpa’s masterstroke. He jumped in air and hit the climber on its back. The cat rolled down and after that Grandpa showed amazing skill and agility in hitting maximum strikes within the shortest time. Very soon the murderer cat got murdered itself. We were so happy but Mother was apprehensive. ‘They say if you kill a cat, God will demand a golden cat from you,’ she reminded us. ‘For that God will have to first give me that much of gold,’ Grandpa seemed ready for atonement. 

Sherry the black German shepherd was Father’s darling. She was the only one who understood his fabulous literary English and responded to his philosophical talks. The rest of the village was clueless to his high-standard angrezi. But then Sherry developed a taste for running after humans and sometimes even taste some scraps of skins on human calf muscles. Complaints arose in very exaggerated proportions. Maybe the people held a grudge against her for her English skills. Father left her with a friend who stayed at the town twelve kilometers away. I think he forgot the basic fact about the canine sense of smell. But he realized it the very next night when Sherry scraped her paws against the door, whining to be admitted in. Father thought that she must have learnt a lesson and would behave well. But Sherry looked for revenge now. I think she understood that the entire neighborhood had conspired against her. Father tried his best to put reason in her brain in classy English. But she scaled up her pursuit of human calf muscles. Complaints swarmed when Father would come back from office at night. So away they went as co passengers in the train to the capital. Father left her in the bathroom, safely locked for a long journey. That was a sad decision but that’s what he could think of as a solution.       

Then there were a few little mushy cats that would sneak into our quilts and give purring, pampering sounds on cold, shivery nights. These were expert cherubs and would materialize in the dark and would look out for the most comfortable quilt. They had a lot of choice.  

Once one little kitten rolled on the ground to kill a common wolf snake, a baby pink, beautifully pattered little snake. Father declared the kitten to be a hunter. He gave special instructions for this particular baby cat to be treated well. He was sure that it would turn into a majestic hunter and would wipe away all the rodents and reptiles in the village. It grew fat on that promise and ran away one fine day, pursuing a girl cat and forgot all our affection.  

I, on my part, had my modest share of stealing eggs from holes and nests under a conviction that if I keep them in my custody, the baby bird coming out will be my friend for life. I kept them in alcoves and skylight ledges, repeatedly checking if my birdie friend had arrived. The eggs but remained good museum pieces. I would only realize and understand the reasons in middle school science books about hatching.

Uncle Surje's Wife

 

Thousands of fungus gnats, tiny insects of the size of one-tenth of an inch, flew into the lighted verandah. They seemed in great spirits, almost in party mood on a special night. I find them dead in the morning. But then maybe they danced to death. There are heaps of tiny dead insects among dry yellow neem leaves and dead rose petals. Dying together with so many of your species must be a strange experience. I broom the floor and almost countless tiny fliers form a fistful of brown sawdust. Where did so many individual points of consciousness go?

It’s a windy mid October morning shoving away the lugubrious, sleepy shades from my little garden and small courtyard. An extremely chatty purple sunbird couple sounds like an excited sparrow played in fast-forward mode on an audio tape. It builds a momentum and lots of yellow and old neem leaves tumble down. A very soft, light drizzle gets inspired, almost wispy brushstrokes of mist, or you can say stormy mist at the most.

Marigolds love October and are quick to give the flashiest of smiles. The bougainvillea is also doing well. It’s a bonsai variety to check its rapid sprawl and the consequent overtaking of the garden walls. During its purchase, when it was a tiny sapling, the nursery guy thrice corrected me on ‘bonsai’. ‘It’s bone-size!’ he informed me emphatically. I stand corrected and call it ‘bone-size’. He had earlier worked at Pune and sold it under the same name to far more important and significant looking gentlemen than me, so that acted as a validation for his name and I accepted it. So the bone-size bougainvillea is trying to break the limits imposed on its wild growth by our scientists.  

In a crack in the wall, there is a sprout of common purselane. It’s slightly sturdy but quite stubborn to grow even on the roofs and walls. It has yellow flowers, which later dry to thorny bulbs and give a pricking retort when you try to pull them out. We call them bhaakri in local parlance. I decide to be stubborn like bhaakri in my restful or call it idle ways. Varied life situations try to tickle at my spine with their urgent toes. I, but, sit cuddling fodder like an old, relaxed ox.

The flowerbeds in the garden give a wild look as ubiquitous weeds take a foothold. Allow, sometimes, mother nature to leave its unrestricted footprint around you. It’s a peculiar medley of weedy world. The shovel, digging fork and hand trowel have lots of rust bestowed by prolonged rest. Human idleness is maybe a boon for wilderness. Mother earth won’t mind too many idlers. Maybe she is wary of too hardworking and smart humans. She has amply rewarded my idlehood.

Little clumps of single-stemmed quack grass with long leaf-blades are nicely clothing earth. There is false tobacco, elephant’s foot, clumps of finer grasses spread like a leafy claw, hairy crabgrass with its wispy hair or call it flowers, matted sandmat or the little ground creeper with sinewy stalk and little leaves, common groundsel with frilled leaves, horseweed with its rosette of leaves. It’s a miniscule marvel, a pampered luxury, enthralling opulence, a grand interlude, a kind of slice of wilderness far away from the twittering long romps of the control freaks trapped in their own cleverness.

There is a friendly rivalry among these little denizens of the grassy world. I gape at the inexorable force of mother nature. It sprawls indescribably. Nature is always at peace while we are forever shuddering and caught in an ensnaring jiffy.

A touch of the untamed grass and distant memories rush up with aplomb and fruit jam sweetness.

Tai Surje ki bahu, the wife of uncle Surje, was a pioneer in neighborhood feminism. She smoked beedis and hookahs with macho voracity. She drank homemade liqueur with a proud exhortation. Novice liquor-lovers got their first lessons in the art in her patronizing company. They would sit around her on the mud floor and gloat over her bartending skills using teacups with broken handles and jarred mouths.

A full bottle got toppled one day. Almost half of its contents formed a puddle in a hollow near her feet on the mud floor. She was quick to act and gave the best lesson in the art of wining and dining. She cupped her hands and splurged the earth-scented cocktail. Her pupils followed suit. It was wiped clean.

‘Every drop matters. We had forgotten to offer a ceremonial drop to mother earth, so she got angry and tried to gulp down the entire bottle. As a good drinker, never forget to offer a drop to mother earth before you start,’ she told them.

She is long gone, but her pupils, in their middle age now, are the present day master liquor-lovers and carry the flag high in the art and craft of full-time intoxication.

Preface -- A Nobody's Notebook

 

These are little snippets of life in the past and the present. I stay at a village and the rural society presents its sweet-sour agrestic culturescape. One may have, especially those who have spent their lives in the cities, an idyllic idea about life in the villages. Well, things are idyllic in nature but you cannot escape the volatility presented by a conglomeration of humans, even at the scale of little hamlets.

Even though right in the middle of it, I stay at its fringes as far as participation is concerned. I live almost within the premises of my house, only coming out when the essentials of life force me out. I have my little garden and small courtyard in my old, cracking countryside house that allows me to even go for walks like a caged lion does—to and fro, to and fro; from one end to the other.

It’s a small world within and a humongous one outside. Little birds, insects, flowers, plants and some small trees in my yard provide me a space, a kind of microscopic view of the larger realities outside. It serves as a little lab of experimentation with thoughts, ideas, perspectives, judgments and of course poetic dreams and imaginations. It provides a bit of stability in this shaky world. I salvage my meaning of life primarily from little happenings among these few flowerbeds and the little clump of small trees in my yard. Life comes peaceful, simple and enjoyable, a kind of little ‘meaning’ amidst all the puzzling realities around.

And a little secluded corner is very conducive to pamper nostalgic memories from the past. So the leisurely bait catches some memories from the swift currents of time. It’s a very nice feeling to visit those times. These memories serve as an exotic spice to make the chronicles still tastier.  

Of course, I peep over the walls also, driven by the natural human curiosity, to see what is going outside. The crude, easy as well as hard-going farmers lead a very loud, interesting life. It but may not fit comfortably with the sensibilities of an introvert writer. Most of the time, things are tragic and comic simultaneously. On the basis of your mood, you have the option to choose either of the two. In the current compilation, I have noted down mostly the episodes and observations that have rib-tickled me positively.

I hope these little anecdotes from my past and the present bring a little bit of sunshine in the life of my readers. If my reader gets a little smile on her lips while reading this notebook, I would take it as mission accomplished.

The Return of the Native

 

It must have rained really well to make everyone feel so happy, relieved in fact, after two days of heavy downpour. It rained so heavily that even the earthworms thought it was the mythical rainy cataclysm and started crawling into the house, abandoning their hideouts in the garden.

Tiny frogs seem to have literally fallen from the skies if you consider their sheer numbers. They can beat even the ants in numbers as of now. Either the God brew their seeds in the pools of clouds and dropped them on our heads or the frog couples have been extra horny on the earth this season. Well, they have taken over the garden and the ones who want better accommodation have crawled into the rooms and are jumping and hopping with full entitlement to the property. We have to walk very carefully. We are as much of intruders to them as they are to us. In their little minds the house belongs as much to them as we have the notion of ownership in our slightly bigger minds.

Fed up with excess waters, all seem to say, request in fact, ‘No more water at the moment.’ The sky is still cloudy but one can see the sun making a dent in the cloudy fabric to reclaim its kingdom. It cannot allow the clouds to rule the skies for too long because they are good as visitors only, make them permanent citizens and there will be a big problem. Well, not for fish and aqua life but definitely for we humans.

The air is fresh, cool and windy. It feels like a massive air conditioning unit is blowing after the preceding hot and humid weeks. The weather had turned so sultry and humid as to put a frown even on the most joyful faces. It has been really baking hot, moist and clammy. Global warming is a reality and we need to come out of our comfort zones and do something about it. If we miss it, the next generation may not have too many options to avert the consequences.

The rains thus have been very lenient this season. Even the prickly trees are decorated with lush green leaves to appear more presentable. They are no longer the crooked-nailed and quarrelsome old grannies. They are now buxom happy women of substance. Drunk with rain and nutrition, the branches sway to the song of air.

The butterflies have extra air in the wings and loop, curve, dive and lift themselves with the sweet nectar of the rainy season. The dragonflies go with more linear determination against the wind like an adamant drone. All seem out there to play after the rains.

The birds have raised a pleasant ruckus. A tailorbird couple is hammering their prickly sequence of angry notes to distract some predator from their leafy nest. A squirrel is busy in tik-tik chorus. Probably its bullying neighbour stole its nuts. An Indian Robin chips in with her coquettish glance and little squeaky note from a wire. The peacocks talk, screech and scream as the kings of the season.

A peacock is under a bigger risk during heavy rains because its big plume of tail feathers soaks so much water. When it rains too heavily, a peacock sits like a statue without moving. That is acceptance of the forces beyond our control. It knows this rainy blizzard is just an aberration. Once the storm is over, there will be blue skies to fly and sing at the top of its voice. They do the same now to the capacity of their lungs.

Coming to the peacocks, do you recall the peacock that sneaked into the kitchen when it was really hungry and after feeding it a couple of chapattis Ma would chase it away with her broom complaining, ‘You eat here and drop your plumes on the neighbour’s roof!’ Ma has departed for the journey beyond this plane of existence. It has been nearly 19 months since she left us. The peacock stopped coming after she left. It didn’t come even once during these many months. But here it is today staring into the kitchen. As I came near, it won’t run away. Immediately I knew it is Ma’s peacock. He hasn’t forgotten. They have better memories than we humans. I sat on a chair and fed it a chapatti and a sweet pancake. It ate from my hands. I had tears in my eyes. Probably, it can see what we cannot and still feels her presence here. Now it’s sitting contently on the parapet, its huge plume hanging down and its upper body lost in the neem and gulmohar branches above.   

A laughing dove couple is seeking a suitable branch for making nest as a follow up to their courtship and acceptance of each other’s love. A stern-looking red-vented bulbul is feeding pulpy, rain-shod guava to her two young kids who are almost ready to take off of their own. Presently they follow their Mama across the trees. Their dependence has no meaning without her love. And her love cannot manifest without their dependence.

A forlorn pigeon looks languorously from its perch on a railing. Probably his girlfriend has abandoned him to fly more joyfully with merrier wings. Another pigeon is playing with the wind. It flutters against the wind, going flip-flop and ascends almost vertically and then abandons its feathery self to be blown happily with the wind to enjoy an orgasmic glide. Is it the happy goon who has taken away the forlorn pigeon’s lady? Well, you never know. Probably they also rub salt on each other’s wound like we humans.

Kitchens are turning busy. Various types of cooking smells waft as freely as the birds and butterflies. And that’s how the song of life proceeds to adopt another day with its tireless rhythm. All this makes this Sunday a real fun day.

Icing on the cake is Rakshabandhan, the festival of brother-sister love and affection. Rakhi is a beautiful reaffirmation of the unshakable sibling bond. Wish you all a beautiful Rakhi day! Brothers, give a pause to your habit of spending money on goonish follies and unstring your purse to give a bit more than you are willing to give to your sisters. Give them all you have, at least today. It’s their day. Beyond the customary money, give them the reassuring smile that you will be always there to help them realize their dreams.

Melodious Regalement of a Slow-paced Life

 

I am all for animal rights and against people using them in street circuses. Still I cannot help but feel the pining nostalgia of the monkey charmers during our grand old days in childhood. Those were the only well-behaved monkeys. Nicknamed Ramlal, Dharmender, Basanti, etc., clad in baby frocks and shirts, they were almost the devatas of the simian world. Holding a stick on his shoulders, Dharmender walked on two legs to fetch his wife Basanti from her mayaka. And Basanti would say a shy ‘no’ to come back. He would then dance, put on goggles and even smoke a beedi with a masculine swag to woo her back. The little street show would proceed without even a single piece of the simian mischief! Why are people looking for the eighth wonder of the world? It already has been witnessed by so many of us.

Well that was past. The times have changed. Do you remember the terrace pole overlooking the open bathroom below in the house having four adolescent farmer girls? The crow’s favourite perch point. A monkey thinks why should the crows have all the fun. So it has grabbed the pointed hot seat and is hanging from the top end. If the motive is the same as that of the crow then it almost falls within the criminal jurisprudence of the humans because the offender is very similar to us in inclinations and gene pool. The stalker has to be brought to justice. On my part, I am praying that the pole’s top end itself does justice where the peeping tom is trying to settle its red bottom at the moment.

A monkey has to drink water but then it has to topple the vessel holding the water as well. You wonder, was drinking just a side effect and the main motive being to topple it to raise a blasting noise. A clay pitcher makes a muffled thud. Unfortunately, it gives this sound only once. My stock of clay pitchers is over. The monkeys have had a lot of fun with them. They seem to be furthering the interest of the pot-makers. This is a kind of use-and-throw fun game for the monkeys. Now the metallic ones are doing their service. Here the monkeys face a slight bit of inconvenience. The metal utensils make a sharp clattering sound and the funster has to run away on account of this noisy impact after the lewd dose of ruffianism. It’s better to turn an applauding spectator to their follies. What is the use of boiling blood with no effect? 

Just now another monkey is doing its best to derive some fun in the most unorthodox manner. There is a house under construction. On the terrace is a half-finished pillar having naked iron bars at the upper end. It’s trying its level best to turn it into the thorniest crown in the world. It must be very confident about its red bum bearing up with the risk. It’s within its rights to do so but I find it pretty foolish even by their standards. Some immature girl monkey may applaud his feat but the slightest mishap will turn him the laughing stock of both the human and simian worlds. Organizing its fickle mind in an unlikely way, it manages to sit right on top of the iron bars and looks with a kingly attitude and royal majesty. Maybe sitting on the iron bars, testing the strength of the bum, gives a totally different view of the world.     

The season is changing at long last. There are faded traces of autumn. In late morning, when the sunrays have gentle warmth, the kittens sprawl for the laziest sleep on the windswept terrace among the neem windfalls. The house crickets, the brown denizens of the nocturnal chorus, also sleep under the items they deem immobile and safe for the day. I just love disturbing them. Shake the covering off and they hop around sleepily and take a vow to drill more holes in the clothing where they can sneak in for better sleep. The winters will come after all.

On vintage autumn nights, tremulous dew-stars kiss the seasonless silence spread over the lips of darkness. Someone’s exhausted sobs and ceaseless moans now dive forever into the measureless serenity of the slumbering eternity. A peasant woman has been crying late into the night. There has been a loss somewhere. The high tide of darkness swallows the star. And the gloom adds to its invisible shades to the far.

A cow has been lowing throughout the night to get a mate. She is in heat and the farmer will surely get up with a smile in the morning because it means the prospects of fresh milk for his children. It’s definitely good news even for the village bull who hulks around looking for such chances of the fresh milk arriving at the house of the farmers.

A drunkard farmer had to be slapped first and then thrashed nicely by his tired wife late at night after he won’t stop his acrobatics at the village square. He cannot do much as of now and bears up with the punishment. But a hard kick prods out a slurred threat that he will see her in the morning. ‘In the morning my brothers will arrive to beat you even harder,’ she tells him. Then he allows himself to be dragged into the house. I have information from very credible sources that even after all this violence publicly, they have pretty busy lovemaking sessions right after.

Reading all through the night is fun sometimes. Try it someday. You share the night’s little mysteries and welcome a new day like a kind host. The day smiles in gratitude. Across the misty, cool, dewy horizon, I feel the new sun, a new fireball with blessing warm rays.

It’s a beautiful morning. The humid restlessness of the rainy season is gone and the autumnal ease now assuages the spirits. A dragonfly is resting on a sadabahar flower. Its wings stretched to perfect horizontal. It has slept till late in the morning. Did it go for some night revelry? I tease it for its night fun and tickle at the pointed back end of its slim body. It isn’t eager to get awake and just pulls itself into a kind of yawning morning-time curve. Her wings are but too precious to her. Try touching them and it is wide alert and flies away for a busy day.

A butterfly, a common mormon, is also sleeping late on a cluster of night blooming jasmine. The Parijat tree is a veritable shower of beautiful, fragrant white flowers. They drizzle down with the rise of the sun. All around her there is a scented drizzle of little flowers. Maybe it’s a boozed up butterfly that had extra fun among the night blooming jasmine flowers and is now sleeping late in the morning. A chatty tailorbird but doesn’t like the late risers and awakens the butterfly with its exuberant vocals. The butterfly flies away to make the most of the few days that mother existence has bestowed in its kitty to fulfil the purpose of its life.

The song of the birds picks up its tempo. Three pigeons fly with a friendly banter; five ducks fly in a slanted line (there aren’t as many as would allow them to form a V pattern because the water bodies have vanished and so have the visiting ducks); a lone heron flies slowly with the unhurried pace of an old gentleman; a few house sparrows dart swiftly; the dainty and handsome Indian magpie robin hops on the parapet wall (seems happy, maybe got a lover and is now joyfully silent after singing love songs in plenty for almost a week). The morning has picked up nicely.

The sky is relieved of its duty of bearing thundering, water-laden clouds on its back. Having shed all that it had to give, it now looks fresh and light. Two peacocks are also feeling very light after shedding their plumes. The weight of love is gone. Of course, love is a very weighty issue these days. They are now pecking and preening themselves pretty freely. They are quite friendly to each other because now there is no competition for winning love in their favour. I think singlehood is quite light and one can be at ease like they are now. They can fly over more distances as well.

The village has seen a lot of development around it. It has now canals and roads circuiting it. It is good. We need canals for water and roads for speedier movement. They did a fantastic job and at a great speed as if they are in a hurry. They have been very busy in making roads and missed quite simple things such as water drainage system and culverts to allow the rain water go down south and fall into the seasonal tributaries of Yamuna. So the ancient natural waterways are choked.

Since we have had excess rains this season, the surrounding farmlands and the village got filled up like a water bowl. They now use big water pumps to take out the excess water. We humans know how to be busy almost all the time. We are very serious about creating problems and then we get onto finding solutions for the same very diligently. And that keeps us very busy.

It’s good to plan development projects but we shouldn’t run to develop things at any cost. I think a leisurely walk to development will do better because we retain our common sense while doing so and don’t goof up to commit silly mistakes. Rampant development leaves many loopholes and then we have to spend a lot of energy in finding solutions for our self-created problems.

When I hold my three-month-old niece in my hands, I somehow feel fulfilled with love and care. It’s a privilege to stand by her as she fights her way out of multiple complications. Her one smile is enough to make one forget thousand miseries of life. That’s what I try: make her smile. And when it comes, that pure smile, I feel like hitting a treasure trove instantly. She scans the cloud patterns as I hold her in my arms, curious to know the strange ways of this world. Maybe the infants can see angels in the skies above.

When things around appear too complex, I pick up Bond Sahab’s book. Immediately the layers of complexity peel off and you see simplicity and purity of a world that all of us have the option to view. His books train your mind to view life in simpler terms.

Iranian movies are Bond Sahab’s cinematic equivalent in taking you to a little world of simpler facts of life. ‘The Willow Tree’ but seems too serious for an Iranian movie. There is a kind of drama that is typical of our movies here in India. A professor gets his eyesight after 40 years. There is a chasm between his feelings and what he wants to see. He wants to make up for the lost decades and wants to see more and more of life. The face of his wife, the angel who held his hand during the dark days, now appears too ordinary in comparison to the beautiful women around.

‘Ranna’s Silence’ again is a beautiful little story. Little five-year-old Ranna stops speaking after someone steals her hen, Kakoli. She loves her hen so much that hearing fox or wolf alarm beats in the fields, on the way to her school, she would run back to ensure the safety of her pet. As she lost her hen, she disowned her smile and beautiful words also. Well, she was instantly the same girl as of before as the thief realized his mistake and returned the hen. Watch it if you want to feel how small things can help us build a peaceful, simple world around us.

Hardeep comes to visit and shares the life lesson given by his father. ‘Never go to Delhi if you can manage it at Sonipat, the nearest city. And never go to the city if you can manage it at the village itself,’ he says. Well, I think it’s basically an injunction about unnecessary loitering around. As an adolescent boy he became very curious about Delhi and bunked school to wander around in the Delhi crowd for a day. His father came to know. He asked his mother to prepare a very tasty sweet halwa. Hardeep ate to his full, thinking he has been rewarded for possibly becoming the family record holder who reached Delhi at the youngest age. So he ate to his full and took happy burps. Then his father very affectionately put his hand on his shoulder as they walked to their field by the canal. It was a grove of fruit trees and handsome flowers. Its mere sight was enough to uplift anyone’s spirits. There was just one oddity in all this. There was a terribly prickly bush in between. His father made him stand by the prickly clump and tied a rope, bringing the boy and the bush in good bonhomie. Then he whipped him with a rope and made him shout ‘I will never go to Delhi’ 1001 times. ‘He saved me from doom, my kind father,’ he says. He is a trucker and a farmer now who tries to avoid bookings to Delhi even if they pay him extra.

We had a little hawan for our angel, my niece Maira. Panditji’s son missed on most of the Sanskrit slokas. He seems very good at eating the choicest delicacies served by the host though. He is very cute and one can see the effect of the hosts’ offerings on his chubby jowls. He made the mahamritunjya mantra sound like some Latin hymn. He looked very apt for eating copious food after the rituals but mastering the slokas is, frankly speaking, not his domain. The old Pandit looked helplessly and then took it upon himself to somehow salvage his honour. The goodwill for him will at least see his son getting good charity for his mispronounced half slokas. It’s basically about respect. Out of the custom of respect, we would accept wrong slokas as well. What is wrong in that? Even the wrong slokas chanted with good intentions will serve their purpose.                    

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water perhaps clings to the narrowest root space.

The garden has hundreds of flowers fed like pampered children. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have.

Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimetres, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came, it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower.

It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest.

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you possess. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!          

The twilight lands after a hectic day. I am preparing cow-dung fire for my evening pooja ritual. A butterfly staggers nearby and swerves around on the ground. I think it is perhaps a butterfly that has forgotten it is a butterfly and takes itself to be a moth and now would love to burn itself to death. Thankfully that’s not the case. It sits quietly on the ground a few feet from the ambers. Its wings shut together in vertical; it looks a tiny sailboat in stormy waters. Possibly it feels cold and has come to enjoy a bit of warmth by the fire.

As I have already mentioned, it’s a little world of big emotions in the Iranian movies. It’s a kind of beautiful painting in motion. One has to be at peace with herself in order to enjoy these little episodically sweetened movies. ‘White Bridge’ is a little painting depicting a small world with only this difference that the characters speak here. Bahareh is an angelic child. Her world comes crashing on her little head as she loses her father in a car accident. Further, she gets an injury in her leg and now walks like a special child. More than her physical injury, it’s the mental shock that has thrown her into a pit of insecurities and fear. The school insists upon sending her to a school for special children. But she loves her old school. She sets out daily in the morning to sit by the gate of her former school. There is a little white bridge where she spends most of her time. It’s a dry little stream and the school principal throws a challenge that she may come to the school when there is water in the stream. And water flows one day. It’s not possible for the dry stream to have water in a natural way. A philosophical teacher works with a farmer to divert water into the stream. The little girl regains her confidence and proudly limps to her school.

Sublimity of Simple Ambitions

 

The three words in the name of oriental magpie robin do full justice to the beautiful, handsome, dashing black and white bird. It’s a flirtatious dandy and imitates many birdie voices when it’s just looking for fun. However, when it wants to convey its strength and masculine charm, it gives a chhrr-chhrr-chhrr type of sawing sound. But its real beauty comes when it falls in love and gives sonorous, high-pitched notes of cheeu-cheeu-cheeu for a considerable time to woo some lady. His love call scores over the rest of the birds among the trees around the house.

Flings are very easy these days but love is something one has to strive for very diligently. Since the birds cannot just have casual flings like we humans, the dandy bird has just one option of deep love and this means singing out continuous love notes as the tired monsoonal clouds retreat in the blue skies. If we leave the humans apart, the rest of the species are into the game of life full hearted, there being no half-hearted effort, be it love, war, fun and playing or committing to parental duties.

The white wagtail is a small passerine bird that sways its longish tail with attentive rhythm as it picks up ants and little insects from the ground. It’s a beautiful sight to watch the birds walking. There is a captivating grace in their little steps. The white wagtail looks an elegant well-bred lady as she walks on the ground picking up her breakfast.

The Indian rockchat also loves snapping out insects from the ground. Its looks are very modest with its pale coffee unichrome. Its fur misses the distinctive patterns or designs that make the birds look beautiful. It’s a plain-looking bird but it makes up for all this by being very talkative. Listen to their pre-dawn gossip session. They have plenty of things to gossip about before setting out to pick up breakfast.

The oriental magpie robin is busy with his love notes. The Indian robin and the white wagtail are walking with ease to pick up ants. The wire-tailed swallows are darting in the air, picking up airy food in the form of fleas, dragonflies and mosquitoes. A solitary pair of parrots goes flying. There aren’t many seen these days. A few bee-eaters are diving and turning expertly to complete their breakfast before the late morning turns to full noon. The sun is bright and the noon turns very hot, so they prefer rest during the hotter part of the day.

Huge cloudy wagons float lazily in the sky. They don’t seem to have any purpose anymore and loiter around, almost directionless, here and there.

A room with a window with some natural view is special by default. The upper room window opens to more trees than housetops. I just have to look out and the banana leaves greet happily. Inspired by this greeting and the busy birdie world with a song on its lips, I try to give my best to what attracts me the most. Not too much guess for this, it’s reading and writing.

Try to give your best even in the worst of a job. Even with very little success so far, I take my writing very seriously. There is a scope for perfection in every nook corner for all ranging from the fortune 500 CEOs to the bathroom cleaners. I have seen beaming bricklayers, stonemasons and sweepers and cribbing, frowning CEOs in the costliest cars. What is the use of hitting too big and lose your smile. Hit only that much high as would not rob you of your smile.

My smile is encouraged by the languorous hand-waving by the banana leaves as I look over the tree-tops from the upper room’s window. One sip of the view outside and another of the book in my hand. My smile tells me that life is really good. Then I read something and I turn serious. This is no smiling matter. I read that scientists are trying to revive the Siberian woolly mammoth that became extinct around 10,000 years ago. From the skeletal remains sufficient genetic material has been retrieved to clone an embryo.

This is disturbing. Why dig up the past to this extent. I think the best thing is to use genetic engineering to extricate the genes responsible for anger, hate and greed from the Homo sapiens. That would make our earth liveable, not reviving the woolly mammoth. In any case, the Siberian snows will vanish in a few decades, so where will the big animal stay. Probably they will have to repeatedly shave its wool to help it feel a bit cool.

All these musings backgrounded by the birdie songs scamper back into a corner. If you have a huge tractor bellowing its powerful engine at the best of its capacity and still louder music blaring out of the big speakers, there is no need to go near a fighter jet to test the capacity of your eardrums. The young farmer is bursting with his ebullient hormones. The bellicose tractor and rowdy music are the tools of his adolescent revolt. And the revolts have their victims. The monkeys run away. They don’t stand any match here. The birds fly to safer trees.

I cannot hop over the roofs like the monkeys, nor can I fly away like the birds. I use the faculty of discretion to fall in love with this portable discotheque now pounding the air in the neighbourhood. So I assume that I like this music and engine noise and sway my head to the tunes.

The Haryanvi desi songs are a war cry even at their gentlest best. But the raunchy ones would suitably provide fitting background music to the real third world war if it happens. Combine it with the massive heaving guffaws of a big tractor and it turns something unbelievable or unbearable. Even at your loving best you cannot afford to like it the least. As I shake my head to the war-music, the initial symptoms of headache surface. I give up. It’s better to hate it straightaway.

Never commit the mistake of complaining because in that case the proprietor of this music will teach you a lesson for your intolerance to his youthful spirit and continue with the music and tractor noise with even more volume till the time he feels convinced that you have been punished sufficiently.

The bird of peace has been shot down and I have to think of doing something else to keep my smile. I am mellowed down completely and surrender the spirit of protest for my legal right also in its wake. Which legal right? Ok, telling this now.

An hour ago, I received a call from the courier operator at the nearby town. I have been waiting for an important communication.

‘Bhai sahab your letter is lying with us. Come and pick it up from our office!’ he straightaway commands.

‘But we have paid for its delivery to my door. Won’t it be nice if I get service for my money,’ I sheepishly protest.

‘We never deliver to the villages. You have to pick it up from us otherwise I will return it by four in the evening!’ he is even louder and iron-willed. 

‘Kindly tell me, if you don’t deliver to the villages, why was the booking allowed in the first place?’

‘That I don’t know. That guy who booked your parcel made his money. Now as per company policy, I can only deliver it within the town. So I will return it. You don’t worry.’

‘Your company name is DtDC. Door to Door courier. And please listen, my door is at least 15 kilometres away from your office. What kind of service is this? I am recording your conversation and will forward the issue to the courier company headquarters.’

He is very pleased to hear this as if I will do him honours. ‘Please do it. As a franchise I am only following the company policy. If you complain, the booking guy in the other city will be questioned, not me. So please complain.’

I had decided to escalate the issue and force them to deliver the item at my doorstep. But the tractor-cum-discotheque stabs my enthusiasm and I decide to leave the scene and make the most of the time by travelling to the town and pick my document. So there I go riding my two-wheeler.

It’s a swashbuckling new road, a national highway that sucks speed out of even the most lethargic vehicles. Cars, buses and heavy trucks zoom past with hair-raising speed. There are many accidents and many people die but the supreme cause of progress and development swiftly jumps over such minor road-bumps.

This road was a small, peaceful district road during our childhood. There were massive century-old trees on both sides and we recognized distances through huge banyans, peepals, sheesham, mulberries, acacia and eucalypts. Then it was converted into a state highway to be finally changed into a brutally asphalted national highway. The trees vanished. The entire countryside looks changed without those trees.

I ride sullenly trying to spot any tree that I may recognize. Not a single old tree is left. Construction is still going own. The air is foul and plumes of dust hit the helmet screen like tracer bullets. Throughout my life I have seen roads getting built, one after another and still we are short of roads. I think finally roads are all that will be left and we will stay on the roads, always on the move.

I am further beaten in spirits by the time I reach the courier office. It’s a tiny establishment, a single room. An old tauji is cooling his paunch under a water cooler. I introduce myself. He remembers the phone conversation and seems offended at my poor self raising a voice for my right.

‘People are very lazy these days. They cannot move even on vehicles. During our days, we used to walk this kind of distance on foot without cribbing,’ he chastises me.

‘To me, not delivering a service for which you have been paid is cheating,’ I retort.

‘If you want to fight for your right then allow me to send it back,’ he seems very confident of his case.

I mull over it and think it wise to take the parcel. I sign and pick up my article as he looks hostilely.

‘And for your information, the courier name is Desk to Desk not Door to Door,’ he chides me.

‘But uncle my desk is in my house, not here,’ I try a counter punch.

‘Ok, no problem. If you still think that way then let me return it,’ he lunges for the thing in my hand.

I literally run out to save it from his old crooked fingers and forget my helmet at his counter. As I plod back like a defeated old soldier, I can sense that my loss is more than what appears on the surface. Then I realize that the helmet is missing. I sheepishly return to his chamber and ask for my helmet.

‘See, your fight for your rights would have cost you even your helmet,’ he reprimands again.

I rest my case and ride back sullenly, more for the loss of huge majestic trees than the half-baked service.

There is a little crowd by the side of the road. A drunkard has died. His body is put half on the asphalt and half on the roadside.

‘Actually he died there at the end of that field. That field is mine. But we have brought him here to pass it as a death on the road so that his poor family gets some road death compensation,’ a simple farmer informs me.

I move on and recall two drunkard pals in my village. They died in contrasting temperatures. One was left by the drinking group under the open skies in the fields after he passed out. It was a frosty January night and he was found frozen to death next day. The other was left in similar circumstances in a field on a boiling hot June noon and was found baked to death late in the evening.

‘They should have used some sense like these farmers and put them on the road to get something for their poor families,’ I think and move even more sullenly.

As I reach the farmlands outside my village, I see Ranbir trying to maintain his steps by the road. He is drunk most of the time. People call him gunman. Well, he never had a gun in his hand. Actually, his right hand got crushed so severely in an accident—he was a good driver who drank less and drove more to earn a decent living—as to leave a crooked twisted mass that curves to the side of his stomach like a policeman holding his sten gun. People gave him the honorary title of a gunman. Now he drinks more and drives not at all.

One has a special corner in one’s heart for the former classmates. He was my classmate from class first to matriculation at the village school. The soft corner for your classmates with whom you grew up is almost permanent. You smile when you meet them. He laughs and I smile and then turn sad as we move on with him pillion riding on my little two-wheeler.

‘An elephant jumps on its heels to raise unnecessary dust; a lion jumps on its paws to hunt majestically,’ he is saying this loudly. I don’t have any clue to the origins of his exclamations. He repeats it many times till we reach the village. I help him get down at the place of his choice. He waves his hand with a smile as I look back. The vanishing trees, the undelivered parcel and the portable discotheques lose their meaning as I think about his wasted life.