Rotdu

 

This chap has carved out a unique identity in the locality. While the rest of the street dogs in the locality are lost in the same old canine ways, standing out almost as an inconsequential common noun, this spotted red and brown champ stands out not for his color (as they usually get christened on the basis of color in India). This one has a fabulous perseverance. He has stuck to his point among all the chaos. It has won him a well-branded identity. 

His unique persistence in the vocalization of his needs, wants and fears puts him in a separate league. Among the riotous canine chorus buzzing with interesting vocals including purring, yodeling, snarling, screaming, barking, whining, growling, howling, sighing and groaning, this fellow maintains the same tempo. He sticks to his copyright tone in all situations from the best to the worst. He piteously whines, whimpers and howls, accelerating his sad, heartbroken song in the given order.

Barking is synonymous with being a dog. They just love barking! God knows whether it’s out of anger, joy, fear, need or frustration. While the rest of them are in a merry chorus, as we humans get jittery during Corona times accompanied by dozens of mild earthquake tremors in the Delhi NCR, indicating all is not well under the earth, this brown-white dirge singer has his own ludicrously howling composition. It appears as if he is offering his doomsday song well in advance. While, the rest of them go into long spells of yodeling and barking in varying joyful notes, as if they can smell the soon to break in fault-line underneath, this champion vocalist but stays on his same old frequency. While the rest of them are shouting ecstatically, we can pick out this one’s piteous howls as if he wants to spoil their game. 

Offer him a chapatti, its anxiety and god knows what pains spurt out through a sad whine that beats even the customary dog’s tail-wagging on being offered food. So the moment you offer it a chapatti, it will start eating but give you a guilty feeling as if you have given it something very bad in taste. It whimpers, whines and then lets loose a screeching note of howl in gratitude. May be he is not comfortable with anything at all in the canine as well as our human world around and goes cursing. Eh, the perennial naysayer!

Growling also is the sovereign right of a dog. They assert their arrogant dogliness through it. What dog is that which doesn’t growl? This one doesn’t. He can’t even if he tries. Because the moment he puts pressure on his vocal chords, the muscles appear to have stuck up at one place to give the same very old whine, whimper and howl. Suppose some skinny outsider dog enters the locality and all the natives are barking out their machismo spirit at full speed, and there being almost no danger as the skinny outsider cowers in the street drain, this champion participates in the defensive force with his full-hearted wretched howls, as if he is on the side of the pinned down outsider. In this he unsettles many of his companions, who give a break to their lungs and actually stare at him to find out if they have bitten their own buddy by mistake. His lowest of a rumble automatically catches onto a sad song of pain and cries. 

When a weirdly dressed gypsy hawker enters the locality, the dog squad gives more pressure to their coiled tails and set after barking in a line after the hawker nomad. He doesn’t mind their barking. He walks confidently, thinking of himself a majestic elephant who isn’t bothered about barking pathetic dogs. They on their part think this strange one will have a share in their chapattis and ladies so needs to be thrown out at the earliest. The nomadic hawkers hardly bother about barking dogs. But even he is forced to abandon his detachment from such mundane settlers’ ways and look behind carefully, his ears picking the piteous howling cries among the proudly ringing din. May be some aloof and unattached gypsy will also start crying after hearing these sympathetic notes. Wonder of wonder, the poor fellow actually believes that it’s barking as can be seen from its taut coil in the tail and proud bearing during the citadel defense. It can’t help if it comes out as a whimpering, irritating howl. May be some unique vocal filter fixed by nature to do some experiment! 

The rest of them have wide range of vocals to vent out a range of emotions from the best to the worst. But this one’s joy, sadness, curiosity and of course frustration are all expressed in the same crying tone. His groans give a clue to his discontentment with life. Suppose a dog fellow approaches him with the intention to play, this one reciprocates with his own innocent intention to play. But how will he stop his sad howling. Those playful sighs again come out as piteous scary whines and whimpers and the fellow leaves him, accusing him of being a habitual crier. 

Amidst all his teary whimpers, he is a loser in love game also as can be expected. During the mating season, the dandies break many a moon to woo their sweethearts. This one also, driven by his biological instincts, tries the same. But the lady runs away during the foreplay itself as his pining moans start with piteous howls as if she has just pierced his heart with her paw. You have to believe me on this. I have actually seen it happening. Otherwise, why would I be interested in maligning his character on social media?  I call him Rotdu, habitual crier, by the way!

Flea-love on a writer's desk

 

The houseflies go gloatingly nibbling at your peace. You are helpless and watch wrathfully, nursing animosity. To rub salt on your wounds they land on your face, the representative of your worldly identity. That seems like vandalizing the holy altar of your existence by stomping their dirty feet on your facial skin. You turn taut with attention; muster up all determination to be at your quickest best. Then you take a ferocious swipe. You hurl all agility stored in your cells. But the houseflies are always quicker than the best of your shots. They escape unharmed. In fact, you run a high risk of pulling some muscle due to the sudden jerk to your limbs.

They doze past your furiously swatting newspaper or any other weapon you have at hand. They buzz away with elegant novelty in the art of escaping. And with a sneering, bantering buzz again land on your skin, to itch your frustration once again. This behavior is in close proximity with making a mockery of your sense of being a human, the supreme species on the earth. But over a period of time, you settle for mild reconciliation and finally sign armistice from your side.

Out of the thousands of strikes and swipes, effected with crouching hate and anger, I have hardly bruised even a wing in my confrontation with the houseflies. But this day it was a golden chance to strike with ravenous glee and kill two foes in one little strike, and undo all the humiliating hops of yore. But there are moments when such an act would sound full of revulsion and, more seriously, dishonorable.

A housefly pair is making love on my table. The fiery flakes of my revengeful self turn to cool showers of curiosity. I’m stopped from sledge-hammering this stupefying dream of these two tiny insects. At this tiny point in space-time fabric, a little episode of sensuous and voluptuous frequencies is unfolding with surrendering grace. I’m reading my morning newspaper. I turn pages. I move. I shift, snort, sigh, yawn and finally hum an uncouth Haryanvi ragini about a farmer’s love, which is basically an animalistic lust.

I’m gloating over them like a shameless peeping tom. They are just a couple of feet away. They are oblivious to any kind of danger today. Aha, love’s animated, flattering tones! All the force of fear and survival now focused on giving a pleasurable crescendo—to heave their species onwards from their end. I take my illegal prying into their private matter even further and start taking their pictures. My mobile is just inches away from them. It seems a bold couple. They aren’t shy of getting filmed in their moments of deep intimacy.

Initiated by the male by striking or jumping into the female (like a typical male of any other species), their lovemaking can last 30-120 minutes. Well, it can give a big complex to most of the humans. Mating comes quite naturally to the species on earth. But to the human mind, it comes as a complex ritual.

The male houseflies use pheromones (produced by the females) to detect a female by colliding with them mid-air or ground striking. The drone tries to force open her wings. If she accepts his advances, she vibrates her wings to make a buzzing sound. Copulation begins, as it does now on my table. They must have had a very heavy breakfast prior to this as fly-mating takes a lot of energy and they need their bellies full before the ritual of procreation.

The drone fertilizes the female eggs. She then lays eggs in a filthy, warm, moist place. From my table she will go and fly to lay eggs on feces and filth a day after. The eggs will take a day to hatch. The larvae (maggots) will bury themselves in the filth and an adult fly will emerge from the pupa. In five to six batches over three or four days a housefly lays around 500 eggs in its lifetime of 15-30 days.

I have the choice to allow the rationality of mind—that these are carriers of diseases such as typhoid, tuberculosis and worms—to stifle the poetic romanticism of lovemaking insects, and squash them down with a newspaper strike. If I do this, I can easily close-up an entire branch of houseflies. It will wind up the new pathways for 500 new houseflies in a week, which would have ended up starting new chain reactions of 500 further houseflies from those previous ones, and onwards similarly. That means I would stop the evolution of millions of houseflies from this end. The rationality of the human mind would encourage one to stop at least one door to the proliferation of these germ-spreading insects.

But is there anything in nature that has not its benefits? Houseflies are waste decomposers and eat poo. A single tiny larva eats about a half gram of organic matter in a day. Beyond the side issues of disease transmission, hygiene and sanitation practices, mother nature produces them to decompose the natural and human-produced organic waste including feces and carcasses. There are houseflies because there is excess of organic matter that hasn’t been suitably and properly managed. That opens the breeding potential for these opportunistic feeders. They lap up the putrefying sap with their sponging mouthparts.

Moreover, their pathogenic immunity can be studied to help us understand the causes and factors of immunity to help us devise similar medical defense guards for the humans also. So in the scheme of mother nature it’s not clear whether stopping this particular point of evolution would be beneficiary or disadvantageous in the ultimate sense.

I think instead of trying to kill a pair of lovemaking houseflies, I should try to properly manage the organic waste around me, at least on my premises. That seems like a real solution—an effort to remove the cause instead of merely tempering with the effects. Helped by the self-approval of poetic romance, I strengthen my moral fortification and allow the fly couple their moments of surrender to the energetic throng of procreation. They are not concerned about my choice. They take their time, oblivious to my shuffling and flicking newspaper.

The drone then takes off after many prolonged minutes of joyride on the rollercoaster of creation. He has played his limited part in the process. The female has a bigger role to play. Her part has just started. She sniffles around for a couple of more minutes, preens her wings and takes off to look for a suitable filthy site to lay her eggs the next day.

A little story of selfless love

 

Here is an inspiring little story of a farmer in the locality.

A poor almost illiterate farmer with a little patch of land. A nice man but into alcohol. His son a very diligent, disciplined and hardworking boy. He did tapasya for medical studies in India. Sadly couldn’t get the admission. His father sold his little plot of land and sent him to Russia for medical studies. The boy is excelling in studies there. The father is slowly dying and fading away but he is peaceful for keeping the HOPE alive in his son’s life. There is a smile on his face even in the face of death.

That’s what life is. If we are lucky we get people who help us in keeping our hopes alive. But even if we are all alone, we have our own SELF to keep the HOPE alive.

Here is another story of Hope.

In the Himalayan villages there are some reports of some village elders willing to go into the forests so that they become prey to the tigers. These are very poor people. A tiger victim’s family gets one million rupees in compensation. But is it only about money? No. It’s about keeping the HOPE alive in their families even if they are no more. So dear friends, just imagine people are ready to even sacrifice their lives to keep the hope alive in their families. Hence, all the rest that one can do to keep the hope alive should be a mere cakewalk.

The mother

 

She is a widow pensioner in her late sixties. Her husband who was in police expired long ago. She successfully raised two boys and a girl. It was challenging as usually it is. She lost her daughter to dowry sharks. It was a huge trauma. Both her boys are settled with their families now. She stays with the younger one. There was a time when he was struggling with his small business. During those times her pension was handy for the family budget. Economic dependence fetches its fair share of loyalty and obedience on part of the dependent to the benefactor. So he was a sweet boy, caring with his tongue when it came to dealing with his mother. Then his small business picked up and he turned moderately well off. Now he was no longer dependent upon the contribution of her small pension in running the household.

What can a mother expect from a self-sustaining boy? He wasn’t directly insulting but due to his newfound economic independence she felt him to be dismissive of her. It pained her. She shares this sadly with me. Now she has to be reminded that it hasn’t gone waste, her struggle and support.

‘Sweet, sugar-coted, flattering words of an economically dependent boy are far lower than the practical, matter-of-fact, official sounding, formal words of an independent self-sustaining boy. As a mother what would you choose? A boy who speaks sweetly just because he is dependent on your pension to run his affairs. Or a boy who sounds dismissive of you but is respectfully earning his bread.

‘The latter,’ she replies.

‘As a mother what was your duty? It was to help him grow up. His speaking over you is a sign of his growing up to be independent. Which mother would want a cringing dependent son? So sister, feel happy and proud that you have raised a man who is standing on his own now. Growing old is being transparent, mellow, adjusting and understanding. Most of the unwanted stuff ought to pass through you without getting stuck up and create pain inside. Listen and smile and keep blessing your children,’ I try to assure her of the wisdom of old age.

A smile comes on her face. She now feels the joy of raising independent sons. 

Smartphone solace in solitude

 

The sun at its baking best on this June noon. Who would come out in such fire unless forced by the circumstances ?But a writer needs to accede to his whims sometimes. My head draped in a towel, I’m walking on the canal embankment. The water seems vaporizing right there while on its course. The grass and bushes almost famished. The trees dispirited. The birds silent, probably taking a siesta. A little flock of sheep is grazing on the sunburnt tufts of grass. The sheep in their woolen coats look like an old man draped in a thick military blanket on a June noon. They look suffering under their coats. But during the winters it makes them look so comfortable and warm.

A sheep is startled to see someone out in such heat. The shepherd is lying under the not-so-dense shade of a small tree. Far away from the world. He is a poor boy in shabby clothes. But he has a smartphone. The panacea for all your vacuums. The world is at your fingertips. You don’t need anyone. You easefully pass time from the airport lounges to the faraway places such as this one. Virtual socializing consoles us in this lonelier than ever world. Beyond all the cacophony, we are lonelier than ever. The smartphone is a faithful companion to the billions of lonely humans.

A visit to Delhi

 

I visit Delhi only when it’s unavoidable. Despite innumerable new bridges and flyovers, traffic congestion and pollution is almost the same from as long as I can remember. The reason is thousands of new migrants and scores of new vehicles on the road every week. The national capital is a sufferer of over-expectations. Urban planning will be better with diversification of focus on smaller cities and towns.

On a recent trip to the national capital, something interesting caught my attention. There was something written at the back of a car of some senior government official. On the road it moves like a stern disciplinarian message. The people mind their driving business well and follow the rules in the vicinity of such a vehicle. I think a cool proportion of drivers on the road are illiterate. But even they understand the pictographic meaning of these red words.

One such vehicle moved in front of my car. I’m already cautious while driving but I turn extra-disciplined now. Then on second reflection I read it again. ‘Great of India’. Well, it looks the same to even those who can read. We are used to read it as ‘Government of India’ and get extra disciplined when driving near it. While, the illiterate ones would give it the same guard of honor as to any official vehicle. The white ‘Great of India’ Swift Dezire moved with honor among the motley crowd. Many drivers gave it space to overtake to allow the high government functionary to reach his destination on time.

World cycling day

 

I never knew there was a world cycling day falling on June 3. I came to know of its existence through a pleasant coincidence. We had once bought a very nice bicycle for my niece. But she turns out to be unsporty type. The bicycle rusted on the roof. Then my nephew came of age, the time when six or seven years olds fall in love with cycling. Thinking he would love it we sent it to a mechanic, getting it totally refurbished. It looked well-oiled and properly greased to pedal a childhood to joyful glory. But even seven-year-old Nevaan, coming during his school vacations, hardly showed any interest in it.

Stationed in the verandah, I again saw the signs of rust gathering on the lovely cycle. That sounded so derogatory to a cycle, especially when there are so many children who would lose their sleep out of sheer excitement if they get a cycle like that.

There are two little boys from a needy family in the locality. I gifted the cycle to them. In the evening of the same day, the sultry silence was broken by a sweet trilling by the familiar bell. The elder one rode, the younger one riding pillion, there they went sashaying across the streets, their dreams on swift pedals. A few moments later, through the ever nosy social media, I came to know that it was the world cycling day! What a beautiful coincidence?

May musings -- 2024

 

The month of May was unexpectedly cooler. The coolest May in the last four decades in fact, thanks to the western disturbances. But the heat will put up its grip in June, the loos will sigh, the sands will fly, the street dogs will walk with their tongues hanging out, the flowers will get charred and vanish (except peregrina). The deep red little flowers stay through the year, except for the coldest moth in January. But the sadabahars also are quite brave. They aren’t bothered about winters and summers.

The curry leaf tree is in full bloom. Smallness is no handicap for smiles. These are little bouquets with tiny white petals. They are so small that you see them only as a pale collectivity from a distance. They have a faint jasmine kind fragrance. They are countless like ants. So many drizzle like a mango tree’s flowering. Yet there are so many left to invite an entire colony of bees to feast through the day. Big yellow-brown stinging wasps also drone among the clusters. To have your stinginess you need to have some sweet core inside. Purple black berries would form later. They taste sweet. I remember the Morni hills trekking times when a huge curry leaf tree would welcome the solitary walker and offer its ripe, sweet berries.

Addicted to mother's milk

 

Despite the best efforts by his mother, Jhallu master won’t stop breastfeeding on his mother. He suckled at her breasts till he was in the eighth or ninth class. Her solutions like putting bitter neem paste and chilies on her nipples having failed to deter him. He would run to his house for lunch during the break at the village school. After eating rotis he would insist, ‘Maa, e maa kam se kamek doka de de!’ Mother, o mother give a little bit of milk. Doka (a tiny milk unit in the farming lingo, equaling just a quarter of a pint) was used for the lactating buffalos that would unwillingly give a few squirts of milk in the basket after much effort.

The banjara baby

 

A small town hospital run by a doctor couple. He a physician and surgeon, she a gynecologist. Nice doctors who won’t dab into your pockets with unnecessary tests. Almost like a state transport services bus—big, slightly disordered, bustling with lower-middle class people. A hospital for medication and service, not a five-star level swanky set-up to take the treatment costs into many lakhs of rupees. The long rectangular entrance hall had a reception desk and chairs and benches for the waiting OPD patients. It would be usually full due to the affordable services and ethical code of conduct followed by the doctor couple.

This day a banjara woman is in for delivery. Dauntingly clad gypsy women are huddled in a corner, sitting on the ground. Then the elderly banjara patriarch comes lumbering along the dim-lit corridor. He is an imposing figure with great moustache, big red head-cloth, slim-fitted white vest, heavy knee-length dhoti and massive leather jutis, which creak to announce his arrival from the delivery section. His stick stomping on the cement floor. His voice boomerangs across the hallway reaching the ladies huddled in the corner, ‘Chhoro hoyo se paanch kilo ka!’ It’s a boy weighing five kilogram. Well, everyone seems weighed down by the heavy announcement.

Fathers and sons

 

Jat fathers and sons would share a most formal relationship. The son kept his head low, spoke in monosyllables, got up to leave the group when his father arrived, and always expected verbal and hand and leg lashings. They stayed like almost strangers under the same roof. When the equations reversed in the old age, the son stamped his authority as an autocrat and the deposed king would need to call ceasefire, smoke hookah, eat rotis in silence and while away his time in the community chaupal.

The same was the equation between Father and Grandfather. They had their own views of running the household, spending, eating, everything in fact. But now Grandfather being in his nineties, Father was at the peak of power. Grandfather usually minded his business. But sometimes, while Father was in office, he would try to regain his lost territory and we would revolt. Usually the matter reached Father’s court after his return. We were always assured of victory there. So one night when Grandfather’s case had been summarily disposed, he felt crestfallen and angrily declared, ‘I’ll ensure that I become a ghost and make troubles for you all!’ he admonished Father. Father lost it. ‘Imagine, he is nearly hundred and still talks of becoming a ghost. That’s no option for you!’ he laughed.

The village of our childhood

 

When we were growing up, the village had plenty of bullock carts. Cattle, buffalo and bulls still pulled the cart of farming. Tractors had just started to come onto the scene. Carts, driven by male buffalos and bulls, had their unique means of shifting gears to increase the speed. Imagine the farmer and the bull both falling into a lethargy, the carter almost dozing with sleep and the bull going very slowly in the rut of the track while chewing cud. Fully relaxed. Then the farmer suddenly realized the passivity. Then he would shift gears. It involved holding the cart-puller’s tail, giving it a jerk, simultaneously his heel hitting the bull’s balls, and the tongue giving a loud clucking sound. All done in perfect synchronism. The bull would be jolted out of its laziness.

So we would imitate clucking our tongues like seasoned farmers. In fact we had tongue-clucking competitions. The atmosphere would resound with clucking sounds. Some chaps would cluck their tongues so loudly that even the bulls tethered in the barns got startled.

My brother took a fancy to be the clucking champion in the village. His practice session would cross over into late evenings when Father arrived from office. The sound has a vehement, egging-on vibes. And who won’t be egged on after a day at the office followed by a commute in a crowded train from Delhi to the nearby town and then a ride in some rag-tag three wheeler plying on the potholed road? So Father reprimanded him very severely after a week. ‘You know what, your tongue will get a fracture with so much striking like flint against your palate!’ Father further admonished. ‘I saw a guy with a fractured tongue. He cannot speak now.’ So my brother had to abandon his practice to become the village clucking champion.

Two-mouthed snake

 

During our childhood there were lots of free sands for the harmless red sand boa (RSB) to lie lazily and be found by the excited, scared eyes of the children. We called it ‘do muh wala saanp’. The village myth went that it had mouths at both ends, that it never bit but if it did on a Tuesday then nobody would survive. The gutsy boys would tentatively hold it in their hands and the chicken hearted like yours truly would stare from a distance.

Then the times changed. The sand was lost. The red sand boas turned rare. Then as per the growing economy even the RSB got an economic tag. It was considered lucky now—maybe due to its rarity. The new myth went that it sells for lakhs of rupees, that rich corporate houses kept it as a lucky charm. So now when a RSB surfaced at a house in the locality, and the unsuspecting children put it in a bucket and left it outside the village, the news busted and the entire locality went searching among the bushes for the big prize. Luckily the RSB had crawled to safety in the meantime. The children were severally reprimanded for harming the family’s economic interests.

A stormy afternoon

 

There was a squall in the afternoon, a powerful windy rain-lashing by the weather gods. And the small creamy white butterflies that were flitting around on a relatively cooler day faced what is most expected from life—a crisis. They struggled through the beating rain. The strong wind made it seem like a flirtatious dance with death. The branches shook angrily as if saying, ‘No, not here!’ as the butterflies approached them for shelter. And once a butterfly landed on a branch, it swayed and shook so violently, catapulting the hapless butterfly again into the squalling throbs of life. The rainstorm was pretty powerful and lasted for half an hour.

It was a little group  of butterflies and I don’t think many of them survived. Most of them must have perished. But how many butterflies get a chance to try their wings, beautiful patterns and colors against a storm? And some chance survivor would see the real beauty of the next dawn and flit around as a living memorial for all of them.

The next morning is a foggy one. It’s real fog with the temperature dipping as low as fifteen degrees. It’s unbelievable for this point of the season in the burning north Indian plains. Nature’s catapults!

The landowners

 

Owning land has been a hallmark of reputation and prestige in the countryside society. So the farmers in soiled, stitched clothes, weathered faces, callused hands would try to receive some respect by exaggerating the acreage of land owned by them while chatting with strangers. One old Tau from the village got a tiny jab at his prestige when he lost to an unknown farmer he met at the town. ‘How much land do you own?’ the other farmer asked. ‘Well, around twenty acres I reckon,’ the Tau from our village replied while using the mathematics of doubling the actual figure. ‘And how much do you possess?’ our Tau asked. ‘At least double of yours,’ the other farmer scored a clean win with a glint of pride in his eyes. ‘Well, even I had that much but just that you happened to ask it first,’ our Tau sighed and congratulated him on the victory. As a reward, in his capacity as a junior land-owning farmer, the Tau from our village filled the chillum and offered the first draught at the hookah pipe to the other, a mark of respect for the senior more respected farmers.

Summer nights in the villages of past

 

During our childhood, the village was far smaller. The houses were small with plenty of space around. The electricity would continue playing hide and seek. During the summers we would sleep in the open on charpoys. The street dogs got a night-long stringed roof over them as they slept under the charpoys. But then you can’t just sleep at night, especially if you happen to be a canine species. Maybe they felt playful during the night and the chappals and jutis would be found missing in the morning. These were the favorite toys of the dogs.

It was a usual sight to find someone searching for his missing footwear in the morning. The lucky ones would find the item still somehow usable even after very serious canine attempts to decapitate it. But humans are one step ahead of the rest of the species on this little planet. They are born to go seeking solutions. The habit is so chronic that when all the solutions for the time have been found, they create fresh problems in order to have the satisfaction of seeking new solutions.

We also had our solutions in this regard. Our slippers, chappals and jutis turned into pillows. We tucked them under the durries and bed sheet and rested our head on them to avoid a situation of beginning the day with finding the solution to the puzzle of missing footwear. A short-sighted solution, like most of our solutions are, because it would surely give cervical problem to the elderly in the medium term.

Summer shades in the countryside

 

Nevaan’s birthday falls in the last week of April. Even the mornings look tired due to the heat. And the charmless air almost guilty over the village. Then a triumphant sound creeps across the sullen sky. Six sarus cranes, three pairs, three husbands and three wives, announce their flight path over the village. They go in a line, in a slightly curving arc of faith. I reckon they extended their stay in the plains by three weeks or so. Places have a tendency to turn homes, they have their own pull, and develop a nostalgia before we realize. But then the heat here will almost scorch their wings. So they have to leave. The manner of their call and the conscious arrangement show that they are up for a journey to spend the summers in the Himalayas among forests, valleys and lakes.

They hold the baton of grace, faithfulness, unconditional love and marital fidelity in a world where love is getting brittle day by day, thinning like air, vaporize like water from the desert sands and fall like pale, dead autumn leaves. Their call carry excitement about starting on a new journey. And for those who might care to listen, it’s a full-of-love, best-wishing goodbye. Happy be thy journey and return safe for your winter stay!

The crane spirit is for elegance, rest and pause. They are married for life and never allow their love to go stale. They keep the flicker alive through beautiful courting displays, dancing, calling, bending necks. It’s a lovely mating dance. For matrimonial harmony, both sexes take up responsibilities in building nests and rearing the kids. A crane couple involves two happy soulmates seeped in their little world. Both of them happily undertake long risky journeys over mountains, deserts and forests. I really love the fact that they are the tallest flying birds because the sarus stands almost six feet tall.

The rich people may have the ACs to deal with the heat. But the poor people have to go out in the burning heat to earn a living. However, sometimes mother nature does them a favor. The western disturbances work as a mass atmospheric cooler for the burning north Indian plains. They bring down the temperature by a few degrees through cloudy skies, sporadic rains, scattered hailstorms and cool winds. The sun that could have burned the poor man’s skin turns a bit kinder. But then the rains and hailstorms destroy wheat and mustard crops as well. It being the harvesting season. It’s never a win-win situation for all of us. Mother nature is helpless in this.

The trees know the implications of climate change. The trees in my little garden have been dropping their burden, fearing a famine, like the crew on a boat flooded with water throws away its cargo. Every gust of wind brings down showers of rustling dead leaves. The trees stand bare, with open declaration, ‘See, we don’t have anything left now.’ Only the guava tree is as green as before. The flowers have vanished. Only peregrina has its red clusters of little flowers where the honeybees hover around in competition with a few butterflies and the purple sunbird couple to get the still left out nectar. It’s like various types of African animals gathering around a little mossy puddle of water at the peak of the dry season.

The nomadic chain has been broken, its pieces flying apart, by the crude hammer of modernity. The big caravans are gone, just like the joint families broken up to form tiny nuclear families with their bigger-than-ever woes and pains. The long lines of banjara carts slowly lurching along the roads and dusty paths are gone. Now we have a customized motorized tricycle with a bike torso and an open carrier body pulled at the back. The banjara riding the vehicle and his wife, children and provisions heaped at the back, going a bit more speedily, but clueless as to what to do, how to do, how to fit in a world that has changed beyond their imagination. One needs roots to survive in a hurrying world, otherwise it will shake you like a furious storm. They now seem to look for a suitable point to pitch the tent forever. And this banjara woman sat on a desert cooler in the mechanized tricycle’s cargo hold. Of course, you need to stay cool to beat the heat.

The Naxalites blew up a police vehicle in Dantewada forest of Chhattisgarh. Eleven soldiers, including the civilian driver of the rented mini-bus, died in the explosion. Another driver, driving the rented Scorpio SUV, can pay thanks to his tobacco-chewing habit for survival in the incident. Actually his vehicle was in the front and was on the way to run over the IED implanted on the road. But a split second decision to take a pinch of tobacco, thus slowing down, allowing the mini-van to overtake him and meet death instead of his vehicle, gave him and others in the vehicle a lease of life. Well, he and the jawans in his vehicle were lucky, just like those in the mini-van were unlucky in overtaking.

Barsana Holi

 

Those were the days when I still felt young enough to experiment with life. Barsana Holi is very popular as we all know. A friend arrived with his car and proposed a visit to enjoy the famed Holi at Radha Rani’s village. I agreed to the plan. Free offers are a big weakness with we Indians. The Holi was nice and colorful as can be expected. The revelers were dancing in the pillared open-air pavilion of Radha Rani temple standing on a rocky hill overlooking the sleepy village doused in a riot of colors.

A couple of trans-genders, elegantly decked up in a damsel’s sixteen-shringaar (maybe they tried to look like apsaras and seemed to succeed about one quarter in the mission), were dancing with lots of verve around their slim hips. They locked their fingers into ours and had a nice swirl dance. Then they sweetly proposed that we should stay overnight. We said a firm NO which they accepted gracefully. But then a middle-aged well-fed roundly built Pandit smartly filled the vacuum. He nicely coupled with one of them and danced a sensuous, colorful dance of celebration and desires. After the moves as their heads came near I heard him muttering the phrases of copulating proposal which his dancing partner happily accepted.

You feel you have a right to take bhang on Holi. Totally new to the experience, I gulped down a full ball of bhang. My mischievous friend fed me sweet sugar-drenched halwa after that. They say that the bhang’s effect gets multiplied after taking sweets. Soon I find myself in a dreamy, jerking world. I start explaining to him the difference between the languorous liquor nasha and the one resulting from bhang.

‘Liquor gives you a slowly rising and ebbing high. A kind of gentle wave builds up that takes you in its pleasant undulations. You feel slow undulations, an evenly slowed time, a kind of even and leveled forgetfulness, a type of gentle plateau. Its graphical presentation would be evenly poised wavy patterns that go onto flatten, their crests coming down and reach the horizontal line as you pass out,’ I tell him. ‘Bhang on the other hand gives it in jerks. Not waves but pointed ups and downs like on an ECG graph. You will have a straight line and then it will suddenly fluctuate to accelerate out of proportion. Suppose you are sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle plying on the road and you see a car coming from the front. One time you will see it small and drawn back almost a kilometer and then suddenly it would flash big right in front. In a flashy jerk,’ I elaborated.

I was convinced of the validity of my philosophical analysis of the difference. I was intellectualizing and laughing. Then the ill-famed effects of bhang surfaced. I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I heard hammers striking and tonking in my head. I was sure that it was just moments away from exploding. I was scared that the heart would come out bursting through the chest. All celebratory color went off my face. A pre-death feeling, I was sure!

‘I’m going to die! And I mean it!’ I declared to my friend. He was out of his wits. ‘Should I take you to a hospital?’ he said, his body shaking with fear. But I didn’t want to die as a bhang-drunk man on a hospital bed. ‘Take me to my place. I’ll die in my room. Let them think I died in sleep,’ I was bothered about my clean-boy image and thought of leaving with a clean reputation, not that of a substance-abused soul.

Poor guy, totally out of wits, he sped at top speed, completely sweat-laden with anxiety and panic. All along the way I kept reminding him that I won’t survive and death was certain. It was crazily scary and death seemed so near. Thankfully I didn’t cry otherwise it would have robbed me of reputation in his eyes for being a death-scared sissy. The clocks of death were tickling and thumping in my brain and the chest. The head felt like it will blast and scatter into hundred pieces. I would count the experience as staring at death from very close quarters.

We reached my place in the wee hours. My head was exploding with pain. I devised a nice mechanism of standing near a wall and slowly bump my head to rattle the tight claws of pain in the skull. The poor guy nearly fainted thinking that he was witnessing my death pangs. Then I vomited. The bitterest and the vulgar most thing I have ever puked in my life. I think I threw out death itself from my portals. Slowly the dark angels of death departed empty handed. I fell asleep.

When I woke up it was the most beautiful of a sunny day. The birds, the fresh air, the trees, and most importantly my breathing, my life! What else you need?! Why the hell we complain as long as we are breathing?! It felt the biggest blessing to be just alive on a lovely spring day. It felt like I will never have any grudges anymore in life.

The art of surrender

 

Two events, roughly 125 years apart, bear witness to the validity of the principle of surrender, of unqualified, ageless surrender to be precise. It bears fruits. The first instance dates back to 1890s. Of all the so-called low caste communities, dhanaks are known to be the least submissive to the dominant landholding castes. They are dark-skinned proud natives who have the guts and foul words to rattle the eardrums. They also possess enough stick-wielding prowess to match the previous two traits. They don’t carry social power and standing, but they hold their head quite high and can definitely quarrel when faced with casteist slur.

In the 1890s, Magni was a popular outlaw from their community. He and his group of vagabonds robbed the travellers crossing the scrub forest around the village at night. Confident of his dark-time profession, he carried extra air in his chest during the day. But then pride hath a fall.

A farmer from the village bought a beautiful mare from a fair. The majestic animal instantly caught Magni’s fancy. The barn was within the almost fortified compound of the haveli. It was impossible to enter once the main big copper-spiked wooden door closed for the night. The walls of lakhori bricks worked in lime were too strong to be broken except by hours of hammering.

Magni but had a better plan than launching a loud attack on the walls. He sneaked into the haveli around twilight and hid himself in an upper wall alcove used for storing dung-cakes and farm equipment. There he sat hidden casting greedy looks at the mare below. Unluckily someone saw him. Very silently a group of rotund farmers wielding lathis and pharsas gathered, closed the gate and peacefully stood below the hiding place. There comes down Magni with the highest probability of being lynched to death.

However, Magni was a smart guy also. He knew humility and surrender has its value. They saw him coming down with his buffalo leather juti held in his mouth as the humblest mark of surrender. It qualifies as the highest degree of self-court-marshal. There he goes, keeping his eyes on the ground, shoulder slouched to a big degree, his muddy leather footwear in his mouth, walking with the warm and majestic ease of ceasefire and surrender. Such unqualified surrender deserves consideration even among the work-brute farmers. They let him pass. But after this episode he had to keep a little less air in his chest as he walked in the village streets.

The second incident dates back a few years. There was a huge bully dog in the village. A misuser of the canine power, I would say. It was so dismissive of the lesser canine mortals. It would intimidate women and children, ate the smaller dogs’ chapattis and stole their girlfriends by force. All in all, it wasn’t popular neither among the humans nor the canine folks of the village. It had been to our yard as well. In fact it toppled over the pots containing dalia poultice for the newly calved buffalo. We ran after it but it would escape.

Then one fine day, on yet other mission of mischief, it got trapped because it couldn’t escape in time. We were successful in closing the yard gate before it could escape. Within minutes a few stick-yielding brats arrived to help us settle the score. They had their own grudges against the dog bully. So half a dozen nice sticks waited to dispense justice. Ours is a society that believes in justice, especially if we are in the authority or position to bring it about.

Had the dog growled or reacted in some angry way meaning a fight back it would surely have meant getting lynched to death. Had it yelped in piteous pleading tones, it would have meant a few severe, maybe, bone-breaking strikes. But it was a clever dog, maybe even wise, as smart as Magni was. Like him it knew the value of utmost unqualified surrender. It sat on the ground, brought out its tongue in supplication and hideous abjection and gave such a marvelous show of shivering that the attacking party was left spellbound, almost hypnotized by the show of perfect surrender.

I think had it shivered just a bit more, we would have heard its skeleton creaking and clanking. We were mesmerized. We forgot that we had sticks in our hands. We saw the waters of his surrender dribbling out from under him. He performed the surrendering feat for full five minutes. Yours truly having some poetic bent of mind or rather heart, became the first one to accept the terms of surrender and even the rough farmers agreed.

The surrender papers presented such a big victory that it wasn’t possible to ignore them. I opened the gate. There it went with its tail jutted against its balls, tongue out and body shivering. A slow march to defeat it was. I hope it wasn’t Magni repeating his surrender in a canine avatar.

March musings

 

The month of March. Earlier we had spring in March. Now it has been relegated to just the last week of February. However, just like many of the customs that we keep following out of habit, I feel better by taking this second week of March as the spring season even though the sun is already hot enough to hit you with its rays right in the mornings.

The afternoon sun is golden yellow, showering its riot of warmth over the ripening wheat crop-heads. You can actually feel the green fading into the littlest traces of gold. The heat is building up to lead us to the harvest season. The nights however are dewy and cool and it nurtures ageratum flowers. These wild flowers have many interesting names—floss-flower, blue milk, blue weed, pussy foot and Mexican paintbrush. These wild blossoms help me keep my belief in the spring season. There are countless light purple and bluish fluffy flowers by the sides of the field-paths, foot tracks, channel bunds and the canal embankments. They have blossomed so profusely—over the thin lines of wild tracks and field divides, as if nature, taking a clue from the mankind’s intense agriculture, has done its best to utilize the thin ribbons of uncultivated land for its unwanted weeds to thrive among the well-manicured lawns of monoculture crop patterns.

They are said to attract butterflies. I hope there will be butterflies soon. There are four red semal or silk cotton trees. After the winter’s assault they are leafless with bare ashen branches at the upper end of a long straight robust silvery trunk bearing a light canopy. But they have luscious dollops of beauty to make up for their shorn-sheep look. These are big red vibrant five-petaled flowers, facing the sky upwards, receiving the grace of open skies and sunshine. They drop with a plop and then the ants have a feast. It’s also a feast for a few purple sunbird couples, bees and some odd barbet that may have delayed its flight back to the lower Himalayan hills with the passing of winter.

On one of the silk cotton trees, three parrots are having a dining gossip. Some bee-eaters are enjoying the taste of the bees hovering around the juicy big flowers. And around these solitary beacons of beauty, the long rows of bluish floss flowers are indeed still holding the banner of spring and avoid an eventuality when the spring will be an extinct season altogether.

There are a few mango trees. These are laden with inflorescence called panicles at the shoot terminals. These countless pale yellow clusters have a fragrance of procreation. So many will drizzle down with gutsy summer winds but still the tree will be left with enough for our taste and the survival of its species. During Father’s time, when they grazed cattle in the scrub forest—most of this area wasn’t tilled at that time—there were so many mango trees along the canals that they could afford to just see the mangoes come floating downstream and eat whenever they liked. Now I see just five-six mango trees in the area. Father told me there were plenty of wolves, jackals and even hyenas in the scrub forest around the village during their childhood times. And now we plough every square inch of land with a pin-pointed precision. So the wilderness is squeezed tight across the canal embankments, field channel bunds, field divides and path-sides. Here I have seen the area’s top predator, a majestic jungle cat that looks very lonely as it runs for cover on my approach. Then there are a few cobras and some jackals. Well, that’s better than no wildlife at all. This is what I consider to be my forest, stretched like narrow ribbons. I walk along these, cherishing what is left of the spring.

High in the branches of the eucalypts trees, I can see cream-colored fluffy little flowers. They spread a faint fragrance of the spring. All along the narrow paths, where the mankind is yet to arrive with pick axe, shovel and spade to turn the soil into some more productive use, there are rows of hemp plants. It has become a ubiquitous weed as if mother nature is offering her spring-time bhang lassi to make us less serious and more prone to merrymaking.

A honeybee with its one million neurons in its brain is happy with the few odd semal flowers. I, on the other hand, with my hundred billion complexities of neurons in my brain feel the loss and pain as well. I know that most of the people are running in the mad race of material progress. They are also Me. I share their fears and phobias because at the level of genome I’m 99.6 percent similar to someone else. With my 0.4 percent of genomic variance, defining my poetic individualities, I roam around in the countryside chronicling what still survives in the background of all that has vanished. It gives nostalgic pain; but it gives joy as well, like these long rows of floss flowers do. I know I’m an assemblage of genetic instructions coded in the DNA sequence; a reflection of genetically imprinted memories in my cells where each cell out of the billions contains 25,000 genes to propel my system of agonies and ecstasies. A tiny memorial bundle of love, agonies and ecstasies, here I walk bracing my fingers against the wild rows of floss flowers which line up to greet me because I recognize and accept that the spring season is still there.