A slim spring

 The spring is slim, a little crack in the windows when the bigger doors close and open between winters and summers. It’s a little blossoming phase between late winters and early summer. The temperature is already nearing 40°C in the second half of March. The small trees of neem, guava, parijat, karipatta, belpatra in our little yard are shedding leaves in panic. It’s a continuous crinkly downpour of leaves. They are avoiding loss of water because of transpiration by shedding their leaves. Dry golden-brown leaves make a loud rustling sound. It’s autumnal in spirit, just that temperature is increasing every day instead of falling like in autumn. But the keekars outside the yard wall are still in spring. A hardwood of arid regions they aren’t bothered about leaf-shedding. With each gust of wind, there is no harvest of dead leaves on the ground under them. One can feel a kind of desolation, slim weariness, a lithe tension as the sun turns hotter each day. The trees hardly think twice before shedding the extra stuff because it would extract bigger costs if not cast away.

Beyond the talks of increasing temperatures, in the month of March the birds are extra chatty carrying the songs of procreation. They sing a startling preface to resurrection of spirits. It turns a pleasantly noisy world before the onset of hot, pining summer. A male Indian Robin, for example, made such a rippling ruckus that it beat the purple sunbird in excitement and verve of quizzical notes. Despite all the man-born sufferings around, which we unleash with our anarchist zeal and principled arguments, the birds sound like they carry spectacular revival of spirits. But maybe they are congratulating the sparrows on the World Sparrow Day (March 20).

In a turbulent and notorious world, caught in the shadows and under the nemesis of the lofty thrones of powerful villains in leadership positions, the spring brings a marginal sense of relief to the poetic hearts. In a world shaken by wars and intrigues, it’s a relief and pleasant surprise to have a spring day named after little sparrows. As the supreme overlords, the deified faceless baddies, stretch their despotism to newer and newer heights, holding their plucky immortality in their razor sharp talons, there is still space left for the sparrows to make a comeback. About a decade ago, the village skies carried a strange stillness as the sparrows vanished from the skies. Our moral fulcrum crumbled to pieces under the hammer strike of our iron-willed, cemented, plastered steps to create concrete jungles even in the countryside and the sparrows lost their little holes. It’s a sweet surprise to see them back. Even their little flocks seem larger-than-life. They are enjoying the bright sunny day; a lot of chirpy gossips going around. Well, if you are lucky to listen to the songs of sparrows on the World Sparrow Day, you have reasons to feel gratitude for this nice little gift.

In lightening encounter with shimmering designs and colors, a peacock is in full plume now. He is unambiguously hooting his gospel of love. His fan-tail is spread laudably and the excited shake of passion shimmers and resonates through the colorful tangle of exotic designs. We have the king and his harem comprising three pea-hens. He is dancing on the terrace and they, giving respecting and revering looks, seem spellbound by his precious talent. Since the start of creation, the game of love, camouflaging as a gentler version of lust, pulling the enduring significance of propagation and evolution of species, has been the chief driver on the chariot of time. We can hardly comprehend the natural code of unrelenting innovation deceptively embedded in each and every ounce of space around us. The peacock gives a riotous shake of colors with love, lust and procreative passion.

The cool windy mornings flirt with warm sunrays. The flowers open themselves with a spirit of religious offering. Fragile petunias show a seminal spirit—red, violet and bi-colored (white and red; red and pink).

The nights have cool breeze and a few ducks, which had come to the plains for the winter stay, take nocturnal flights. Their soul-force guiding their need-based journeys back to some Himalayan lake, away from the abhorrent turmoil of the plains. They quack a ‘bye’. Peacocks and peahens hoot during the nights. During the day they perch upon the highest points on rooftops and look around as if lost in grander assumptions than the rest of the birds.

The few pairs of doves in the locality love being foolish. They are not to be impressed by the arrogantly styled stateliness of the weaverbird nests. They are contended with the same old house that has seen many tragedies in the past, the very same little, fragile nest that has become the common breeding point of the dove community. When unoccupied it seems a sublime memorial of a species’ looming extinction. The bird of peace looks in shock and awe of the human juggernaut. Caught in the dreadful constellation of unquenchable human desires, they seem to have given up and fulfill the formality of laying eggs in the same famished nest. From our standpoint I would call them most careless of birds. One can see the eggs just couple of feet overhead through the see-through nest. As if hurriedly saying adieu they lay eggs in the same nest one after the other. I haven’t seen even a single successful hatching out of dozens of eggs laid in the little clump of trees in my yard over the years.

The handsome oriental magpie robin that sleeps among the parijat branches at nights went for a nighttime dinner. The washroom in a corner in the yard invited him with its bright bulb. The bulb shone with its appetizing flair of mosquitoes and moths around it. The dashing, dainty guy sneaked in and ate to its contentment. However, it became greedy. At last, I had to put off the light unless the problem of plenty gave it gastronomical effects. In this way the tempo for the summers is building up and just a few weeks down the line the scorching, burning north Indian summer awaits with a baking glee.

The visiting rufous treepie is heckling with the native birds, maybe reprimanding them before starting for the journey back to some little wooded valley in the Himalayan foothills.

A sowthistle has touched the prime of its species. With an ecumenical spirit it has grown to a height of above six feet. Blinded by the exacting smokescreen of our greed-based models of development, we may have categorized it as a weed, but it’s as lovely and likeable to mother nature as any other plant of great utility to we humans. I have allowed it to grow among the marigolds. The marigolds have dried out, after a heady assertion of their blossoming spirit during the coldest weeks of January and February, leaving little saplings growing under the dead skeletal stalks of their parents. Among them blossoms the tall sowthistle, an expression of mother earth’s untamed spirit of wilderness which we humans, with our vilified and misguided bravery, have been trying to quell with brute force, unleashing a downward spiral of nature, decimating ecosystems.

The sowthistle carries the charm of wilderness. It belongs to dandelion tribe in the sunflower family and its flowers look like miniature sunflowers. Just because the bigger sunflowers give us oil we define them as useful, while these little blooms don’t fit in our utilitarian plans, at least not till now, so they are just unwanted weeds for us. But in a world defined by man-made ethical tenets, when everything bottom-up from the ground dust to the planets above is eyed with a hardcore intent to extract useable juice, as a sort of ugly assertion of our right to rule the planet and still beyond, when the spring has been ostracized to few little wild blooms in patches of land somehow beyond our direct manipulation, these tiny smiles are specially significant. These little yellow flower-heads, of the size of a button (half to one inch in diameter) greet me with the comparable resonance of those times when our earth had real springs. They are not as useless as one may think. Sowthistle derives its name from old times when it was fed to lactating sows to increase milk production. Now, these little yellow flowers with frills around the edges carry the banner of spring in my little garden.

And the humans, in their glamorous villainy and manipulating fantasy, convulse with festive spirit on Holi, Vasant Kama Mahotsva. The farmers have their own version of Holi fun. It’s pretty rowdy and riotous to the extent that a city gentleman would surely recoil in horror if he witnesses it. This is the day when patriarchy is razed and attacked by the female warriors. The male elitism gets a day off and the females pommel the male backs, bums and legs with cords made of their head-clothes twisted around to give the sting and strength of a thick rope. Some of them even secretly interweave a wire inside the twisted cloth-cord and unleash all the pent-up vengeance pooled through the year. Its effect is evidenced by blue welts on the backs and bums of drunken farmers which they proudly carry for weeks after the festival. The menfolk pour anything ranging from street muck to fresh and stale buffalo dung all over the women. It starts with fun, progresses to shouts and changes to drunken brawls, squabblings and plain fights as the evening builds up. One of the drunken men poured deep dark oil on the tailless male cat to turn it into a hilarious mini tailless jaguar. I think the poor fellow has lost even the last chance of wooing any of the cat girls unless one of them has very sadist sense of taste for choosing a partner. 

The sullen petunia—that remained flowerless among a riot of colors on its brethren around—decides to celebrate Holi. It smiles with four flowers, four beautiful binary flowers having soft pink and milky white strips alternately designed across its frilled trumpet-shaped blooms. The handsome magpie robin is letting out a cascade of colorful notes as if celebrating the lynching of males for a change on the occasion. It’s a fantastic mimicker. In tune with the Holi-time fun and frolics on the ground, it’s mimicking the rapidly chipping notes of the purple sunbird. After all it’s a special occasion. There are colors in life. I have seen it alone during late winters. Now there is a lady in his life. It’s happy and goes for a fun-filled, excited, ecstatic hopping flight over the unruly fun unfolding in the streets below. It goes up and down and jumps from tree to tree. Meanwhile, his girlfriend looks pretty impressed from a branch. He indeed looks very happy to have found love in the spring after lonely winter nights.

In the late evening, the Holi show culminates with the aftermaths of a misunderstanding between two drunkards. One of them is lying like a log in the street. The other is busy in unleashing the fury of a hard kolda all over the fallen Holi-celebrator’s body. He is a strong lad and gives big, powerful strikes. His tongue gives suitable company to his hands as it raises a massive tornado of choicest abuses, cuss words and expletives in Haryanvi language. Their slippers are lying nearby. A lady dog thinks it better to at least put out the prospects of the footwear becoming a part of this war. She picks them up and puts them in front of a particular house. The peasant woman offers her buttermilk sometimes. Out of gratitude the cute canine lady looks forward to add to the collection of her patron lady’s footwear. In fact the temple goers have been complaining about their chappals going missing from the temple gate of late. They now know where to find their missing footwear. I think this lady dog has taken her job a wee bit too seriously. But then she doesn’t like anyone else doing her duty. Her patron had a visitor who left her slippers in front of the gate. The canine lady felt insulted over this transgression of duties, so she picked up the articles and put them in the middle of the square nearby.