A bit of clean-up drive

 

There is a pre-Diwali clean-up in the house. Thanks to the festival spirit, morose strains of discontent and apathy get dispelled from the soul. Loud-mouthed disorder and clumsy disarray get confronted finally. Festivals bestow you a moonlighted spirit and carry a genial touch of humanity. My cleaning the house, as a Lord Ram worshipping Hindu, to welcome Diwali, leaves enough amusing nuggets for the Muslim trash-picker to make him really happy. He is not-a-boy, not-yet-a-man.

Due to the shake-up drive, the crickets are startled, a conference of frogs gets disturbed under a rusty piece of iron, a lazy lizard scurries away as a plastic case is taken out, and spiders struggle on their arthritic, shaky legs as corners are cleaned. The shoebox tied to a not-in-use ceiling fan, fixed to serve as a nest for the birds that never accepted the tenancy offer, has stinging hornets. Well, not all tenants are submissive. They save their house in the cleaning drive. A fighting attitude helps these days.

These are balmy late October days, the autumn holding the little world in cute enticement. The clear sky hanging with a swanky magnanimity. The stars leave a fluorescent nightglow. Peace and harmony hit a peak when the monkeys aren’t around. But then some liquor-lover comfortably fills up the vacuum. The wives of the liquor-lovers have to daily stretch their patience to accommodate newer domestic troubles.

There are myriads of anecdotal stories in nature’s kitty. A hailstorm strikes to send down the message that not everything is under our control, at least for the time being. It’s a heavy lashing by the skies. There are broken branches and decimated paddy in the fields. Who can help it? There are still confusing contours of myriads of mysteries above.

An old alpha male monkey, fuelled by his vintage sexuality, has a child bride towing him these days. How I wish that he gets at least a dozen strikes with big icy clods from the heavens!

The banana cone is still there. Its layers open with gentle succession. A purple sunbird is busy at it during the day. The bats get its possession at nights. The monkeys have stoically spared it so far. They just pluck away little banana fingers as these unfold above the cone.

The little frog in the kitchen seems distraught that the ever-eating Trummp is gone. It was a good source of food. Little crumbs would fall from the cage and the little frog would dine under the cage. The gluttonous parrot proudly looked at the tiny frog below. Well, that reminds me of Trummp again. I missed to mention that as it finally emerged from its charming spell about eating and emerged from the cage, I shouted, ‘Ja Shimran jee le apni zindagi!’ Let’s hope she is having a nice nuptial inning with her husband. I would prefer to call it Shimran now because there is no need of using cuss words now.

It reminds me of another parrot. My brother’s friend has a pet parrot in Kashmir. It drinks wine with his retired father in the evenings and after that in eased-up spirits whistles at any woman who comes visiting the house. He isn’t bothered about the men entering the house. Maybe the cosmic sense of masculinity itself carries the strains of lecherousness.

Mistri Sat Prakash, a native of Jhansi, informs that the parrots born on an old, grandfatherly neem tree are wise and clever and can be taught to speak. But those born on mahua trees are dimwits and enjoy their foolish tete-tete only.

Sat Prakash is helping me restore a semblance of order in the dilapidated and disarrayed yard. The bricklayer is a small frail man with strong hands. The latter fact is more important for a mason because only strong hands enable you to keep grasping at life, especially if you are poor and have to work daily to survive.

Last night, after he had finished his work for the day in my yard, a smart teacher lured him and others to transfer his provisions to the town. ‘It will take just an hour,’ he told them. But that one hour got completed at three in the morning. So he and his helper are sleepy as they work for me on the next day. They work very lazily and I allow them their semi-sleep. Exploitation there has to be compensated here with some lenience now. It helps people in keeping their faith in humanity.

He is extremely soft spoken and a simple man. You point out the most glaring fault in what he has done, he will listen to you very patiently; he would continue listening though your suggested solution and would finally add, very gently, that this is exactly what he was going to do. His best quality is that he doesn’t trouble his brains with his own plans as a mason. He would do exactly what you tell him to do.

In his sleepy state, taking the afternoon tea, to make up for the inefficiency at work during the day, he gives me new nuggets of information. ‘A prêt has just three of the five primal elements, a sort of spooky concoction of air, sky and ether. So we shouldn’t worry too much about them. They lack solidity and ground to do something physical directly,’ he informs me. Well, that makes the ghosts pretty harmless to me now. It seems a highly scientific explanation.

His helper is big built, very suitable for the physical tasks of digging, lifting load, mixing concrete and the rest of ilk that a mason expertly orders his helper to do. The boy is smeared with soil and cement and grumbles about his slovenliness. ‘Who has ever washed a lion’s face?; who has washed a male buffalo’s behind?’ Sat Prakash eggs him on, making him a lion and a robust buffalo both at the same time.

Despite all the strength of his hands, his handshake carries a feather touch. It feels like you are holding a lifeless hand. It seems he has shaken hands for the first time in the late fifties of his life. Who shakes hands with them? The people usually shake and jolt the littlest semblance of dignity and respect their soul still carry.

And irrespective of the day’s concretely frank and upfront tidings, the nights can be gentle, affable if you have the aesthetic signpost of some slow-paced, gently characterized Iranian movie to guide your way through the night’s oeuvre. The Iranian movie ‘A Cold Day’ is another warm, little story. To like an Iranian movie, you need to be a lover of small-time beauty of nature, hills, flowers, streams; the unhurried pace of life; smiles, soft emotions, simplicity of life and dollops of nature. They beautifully make up for the absence of song and drama.

It’s a little school among small, rolling hills. A teacher saves a little second grader from the fire in the school and gets serious burn injuries. Little Ali is the boy concerned. He is plagued with self-reproach as the teachers blame him for the episode. The teacher has burns on his face and is hesitant to appear before the students. Ali breaks the ice by visiting the teacher who has gone into utter isolation on account of his changed looks. They face each other with frankness, dignity and respect. The smiles return.