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.

A Pilgrimage

 

Through the cut and thrusts of life, as a formal authenticity of my faith, I sometimes go for Govardhan Parikrama. Walking miles on naked feet saves the disillusionment from turning into cynicism. Pilgrimages are significant in their psycho-spiritual dimensions. Bleeding hearts and their taut indictment of the covert and overt shades of fate get a respite. The creeping monotony of life withdraws its steps for some time. The sense of peace felt, despite the hardest of moments, is inherently intriguing.

There is a sadhu in a wheeled tin cabin stationed along the pilgrimage path. He is reading from a scripture. He looks like a well-kept exotic bird. He has shifty eyes and looks at your hand as you approach him. If your hand doesn’t enter your pocket to take the wallet then you are a transgressor into his hymn-citation space. A person not only commits the mistake of not touching his wallet but also performs a double whammy as he tries to click the sadhu’s picture as if he is clicking a rare bird in a big cage. The sadhu loses temper, breaks the sequence of his mantra and retorts, ‘I don’t take a selfie!’

Nearby a mammoth alpha male is having the fun of his life. He is lying sprawled on the sand, his belly up and all fours spread out. His queens are giving him a nice massage by rummaging their nimble fingers through his fur to pick lice. Another one is busy fulfilling the basic instincts on his queen consort, the primal religiosity of all living beings.

At a path-side temple, the priest proudly informs me that around five crore pilgrims daily visit the temple. The mathematics leaves my head spinning. I try my level best to show that I believe him. I succeed and he pats a nice blessing on my back. It props out something from my wallet. But he doesn’t seem too happy about the effect of his blessing pat.

An exclusive signboard says: Chunmun Bandariya ke liye 1000 jamun ke ped, meaning one thousand jamun trees for Chunmun baby monkey. It’s a nice little grove of fruit trees. Blessed be the Babaji who asked his disciples to set up this little grove of fruit trees. In fact, many monkeys show that it’s fulfilling its intended purpose as they romp around among the fruit trees.

As I get tired while walking, I try to take inspiration from those who cover the entire distance by prostrating, stretching their bodies on the ground all along the way and cover the whole length by measuring it with their bodies. Such flawless faith makes you a God or Goddess without doubt.   

The Story of a Aaam Family

 

This is October end. There is a ceremonial frenzy of the season through falling leaves, almost a rain of dew at nights, fleecy mist at dawn, dew-drenched flowers at sunrise, paling sunrays, cool breeze, lots of festivals and much welcomed freshness in social mood. The air carries some floating salubrious emotions. Rashe and his younger brother Karne are sitting under a tree. It’s day off from work. Well, their case needs a mention here. They have a smalltime, ambling past, a little history of their household.

Rashe’s brother Karne went missing at the age of ten. He was spotted last time at the nearest railway station at Sonipat. Everyone accepted that he boarded a train but whether he went north or south nobody had any clue. Well, his parents had three sons and a daughter, so he wasn’t missed much in the one-room house of a poor landless family lying almost at the base of the socio-economic hierarchy. The most popular version about him was that his organs had been harnessed by the medical mafia and he had completed his purpose on earth.

His father had one leg afflicted with polio. So they christened him Langda, the lame one. Langda was very hardworking and would give a tough challenge to any two-legged human around in completing tough labor tasks. He loved drinking after the day’s hard work. And once he was fully sloshed, he would give a test to his lungs by shouting so loudly as to be heard even in a neighboring village on clear, silent nights. He didn’t say too offensive things. He just targeted an ex village head who had denied his request for a below poverty line card that would have made him eligible for free ration and some help for repairing his one-room house. Langda wasn’t in the sarpanch’s good books, so his name didn’t enter the beneficiaries, while people far richer than him got their cards that entitled them to receive government subsidies. So Langda would shout ‘Dalbir sarpanch mar gaya!’ throughout the night. It meant the sarpanch is dead. The ex village head stayed at the farthest end of the village but he would regularly hear the declaration of his death because Langda shouted better than a big loudspeaker. Finally, they had to give him a few slaps. Langda simply brought down the volume a bit but continued with his declaration nonetheless.

One night a fully drunk Langda was hit by a high-speed car while crossing the road outside the village. The family received ten lakh rupees in compensation from the party in their out of court settlement. That helped them in making a better house. His widow would acknowledge God’s help as she saw their better home. ‘Thank God their father’s bones sold well!’ she would say.

Then Karne returned after ten years. He had grown tall like a giraffe. He had actually boarded a train heading north to reach Punjab. There a good-natured Sikh farmer kept him as a helper on his farm. As a goodwill gesture, I gifted them a big speaker lying sullenly in the store. Karne and his brother, Rashe, the gentle giant, loved music. They must have really liked the gift because they played songs at a riotous volume throughout nights. The soul of their father must have felt propitiated, hearing his legacy being carried forward in a nice manner. Rashe and Karne would work on the farms and construction sites and would enjoy ganja whenever possible.

Well, ganja has been quite a popular choice in this part to forget the hardships of life. During the good old days, people would smoke ganja sitting on the last seat of the last bus and its fumes would take everyone in the grip along the aisle. The driver would baulk that his head is spinning and he would crash-land the bus into the roadside ditch. ‘Please do it, you will also die with us!’ they would encourage him to keep his words.

During those grand old days of theatres, when people danced in front of the screen on popular songs, there would be some ganja-lovers inside the cinema hall who would leave a big plume of ganja smoke leaving dozens coughing and sneezing. Ask them to stop it and they would threaten to help the troubled person by beating him to pass out and hence turn impassive to the offensive smoke. Those were the days when women won’t dare to step into a theatre because the crudest words were hurled in the darkness infested with grossly atrophied masculinity. Well, coming back along the ganja strains to the little tale of Rashe’s house.   

Their brother, named Munna, is a bit higher placed on the scale of cleverness and sophistication in thinking. He works at a needle factory in the nearby town. A few years back he took an overdose of ganja. People said it entered his brain and he shouted all through the nights for almost two years and kept the family tradition of night shouts alive. Well, on a dull drab overcast autumn morning, the song of the birds holds the hope of a bright sun sometime. The fate of the only witty son in the family also got its sunshine. He got his mind back and stopped shouting. In fact, he seems a silent sage now and speaks only the least words required to sustain his job.

Rashe is my favorite of the three. ‘How are you Rashe?’ I ask. ‘Even happier after meeting you,’ he replies. He did some work for me and after paying him I asked, ‘Is it enough?’ ‘There cannot be any shortage in your reign,’ he replied. He prefers payment in liquor. Handing over the favorite beverage after the completion of another task, I ask him, ‘Hope this is sufficient.’ He points his fingers to the sky and declares, ‘God will definitely give more.’ So I have to give him more to fulfill God’s wish. He has a cutely slurred speech thanks to the immobility of his lower jaw that went out of action after their horse hit him on jaw when he was an infant.

Their mother is a much-at-ease woman. She is a big lady and moves slowly with ease and comfort. Any type of restlessness is farthest from her persona. She is incapable of holding any ill will against anyone or anything. The villagers take these uncompetitive traits as signs of her foolishness and say that she is weak in mind. Being competitive, restless and quarrelsome are taken as signs of mental health. She is thus beyond any malice. There is an exception though. She has a mission against the monkeys and that makes my head almost bow in reverence before her. The roots of this animosity go back to her childhood. She cannot forget that a monkey snatched away the sweetest mango she has ever tasted in life. Unpardonable. The simians got the duel further when an irritated monkey sank its teeth in her calf muscles. She took hold of its fur and bit even harder. The monkey carried the bite mark to its grave just like she carries hers on her leg.

A Romancer of Loads

 

This one again dates back to the eighties of the last century. They gave him the name deplume of Bhunda Nai. Bhunda derived from his features, which stood as pompous adversaries to any sense of symmetry. There was a gross inaccuracy in their alignment with a sense of normalcy. They shouldn’t have named him Bhunda, ugly. To me he looked pretty interesting with his strange features. Nai was derived from his caste, barber.

Bhunde Nai ka bharota, Bhunda Nai’s fodder bundle, was part of local fables. He had spun a dynamic legend about it. Apart from his customary job of cutting hair, shaving beards and filling hookahs during weddings, he worked as an agricultural laborer. During those times, in the harvesting season, a laborer would be paid in fixed maunds of wheat and fixed number of fodder bales. He couldn’t do anything about the wheat because it would be measured. But the equation was open in terms of the number of fodder bales. A bundle could be as big as per the carrying capacity of the bearer. He made it the largest in the area.

He was a small man but very strong in bones. He had sewn himself a huge piece of sackcloth in order to accommodate maximum amount of fodder chaff in a bundle. The people comfortably agreed that his huge piece of cloth could easily accommodate a quintal and half of wheat chaff. Then he would walk like an ant carrying a huge grain of sugar. He was technically entitled to it. As per the norms, the farmer couldn’t say no to his load as long as Bhunda could carry it.

Then one day he fell while carrying his load from the farm to his house. They measured the load. It was dangerously near to two quintals. The village headman, a wise old man, had to intervene. ‘We have to fix the amount in measurable terms for fodder also, otherwise he would break his neck some day,’ he said. So the rule was changed and fodder chaff also came to be fixed in weight so that Bhunda won’t put his life at risk by carrying the heaviest load as per the old rule that allowed specified number of bales irrespective of their weight.

Bhunda was disgruntled. ‘You higher caste people make rules as per your advantage. What business is it yours if I break my neck while carrying my load,’ he cribbed while shaving the beard of a very old farmer. ‘We have all the business in doing so and save your life. Don’t we take care of our strong bulls who plough the maximum furrows for us?’ the old farmer asked in a gentle tone. Bhunda Nai had to agree to the logic. Strong laborers were as much indispensable as the strong bulls in agriculture during those days.

Why is the real poetry a thing of youth only?

 

Most of the real poems are written during the turbulent twenties of a poet's life. In the early twenties, one is pursued by the glorious uncertainties of life. It’s a slippery, exciting and critically opinionated path. Don’t worry, it’s just a surge of extra energy, nothing else. The stage is shaky and realities are yet to get a foothold. You trample a lot of turf like a young colt spraying legs in all directions and galloping just for the sheer causeless fun of it. Of course, there are consequences but they hold their miserable importance in the eyes of the elders only. To the youngsters they are just irritable speed-breakers on the thrilling path.

One’s hormonally buzzing self floats in a hazy mist of unripe, raw, juicy, sweet-sour tart of dreams and imaginations striking the moron mass of established norms. The hormonal-storms-fuelled beliefs, views, opinions and dreams create sparks and sometimes thunderstorms. Nothing wrong with that! That’s all part of our making. It’s a pretty noisy and shaky groundwork born of your ‘making’ that provides a bit of stability later in life. Ask anyone, most of us are very lenient and forgiving towards our youthful gallops even if these have given us many bruises after the hard falls. We wear them with pride like the symbols of our reaching the peak of the mountain.

Tossed by immaturity and the raw power of youth and age, one hits the extreme ends of emotional scale. It’s a massive range of most painful pangs of heart to the ecstatic most reverberations of spirit. It’s a churning of our existence pulled by totally different strings. The product is quite fatty and butter-laced. No wonder, poetry is the handmaiden of the youth. The sediments, the cuts, the corrosion, the erosion, the torrents all unleash a gushing stream of emotions and adventures that swirl past the hard-established conventions and taboos to create a niche for the self.

There is an entire emotional terrain from the bleakest to the brightest as a youthful soul tries to manage the precarious walk on the shaky rope of young age. The same was the case with yours truly. It was a far simpler world in the nineties of the last century and it seems a long time since then. But it’s never easy for the youth, be it any age or century. They have their own challenges, agonies, follies and ecstasies.

The sheer shakiness of life in youth propels a multitude of streamlets in one’s heart. There is a teasing pull between the head and the heart, wherein the latter most often wins the lots in its favour. The elders may disagree but young people have an entire parallel world, a world that challenges the mundane and boring and firmly etched norms and conventions. We may compromise later in life and settle for a far more contained and restrained life but all of us carry pining nostalgia for our youth because that is when we really challenged the chains that curtail our free flight.

Our follies, which we committed during our youth, still stand better than all the rights of our later years. This is in celebration of youth and its tendency to throw us literally to hit against the ceiling. And the bumps, bruises and little scars that we get along the way never fail to bring a smile on our lips even in the grey years of our old age.      

The Last Bus of the Day

 

This goes back to the last decade of the last century. Those were the times of very limited means of transport. The last bus would start at half past nine in the night from the district centre for the neighboring district city. Our village fell at a distance of 10 km from the starting point. If the rumble-tumble of circumstances found you stranded at the town at night, you had to muster up every ounce of your flint-hard willpower to get a foothold on the last means of conveyance. If you missed it, pleading a lift with the truck drivers was the last resort. This was lethally inept choice because even if some trucker gave you a lift with a conspicuous condescension, you would lay at the most open disposal of fate as they would be drunk and ply their jangling vehicles with untamed energy.

It was against this background that the last bus acquired a big status. Those were easier times and at half past nine, the town would look deserted like it was midnight. The exotica, the erotica would arrive shaking its tin body with the epitome of teasing virility. It carried an air of romantic freshness as it arrived at long last. The big group of stranded passengers—at that time one would feel like stranded—would welcome it with whistles and catcalls. There would be a stampede to grab the seats. Tempers would ride tautened strings.

There would be dozens of indifferent village drunks among the passengers. Lawlessness went on increasing down the aisle. It reached its peak on the last seat. The conductor looked helpless in doing his ticketing duties. He appeared singlehandedly pitched against millions. He would squeeze through the pandemonium of brawls, lewd songs, guffaws of laughter, cuss words and dirtiest jokes. Free spirit unleashed its lecherous mechanism in full veracity with the evil. Everyone felt so free and independent to go to any extent without the censorial holds of society and traffic laws. Most of the passengers would flatly say ‘no’ to the bus conductor’s request for a ticket. There was no danger of getting caught by the ticket-checking flying squad at night.

There would be a joyful tension and exciting tumult among the law-breaking passengers, and the conductor carried his moist and embittered soul among the enemies. The roadways department chose muscular and brawny types of conductors for this last, tough trip of the day. Amidst the brash and benumbing noise, he tried to salvage some coins in his green leather bag and save the ignominy of not being able to hand out even a single ticket among the crowd. The moment he heard a sorrowful, somber and low-timbred voice, he would swoop down upon the opportunity to sell at least a ticket. More duty-bound types would enter into a verbal spat and even a fistfight with the vagrants. So, all in all, it was a charity round by the roadways. Dozens of passengers on the roof were the freest souls. They were above any rule of society and traffic department. Dark vaults of the sky were the farthest limits for their fun-ride.

Fauji Thekedar, a smalltime construction works contractor, once found him in this pandemonium. He was no Fauji, soldier, but his conduct was so orderly and disciplined that they accepted him as a soldier, more real than the real soldiers in the Indian army, and gave him the honorary title of Fauji. He also justified this title much demonstratively and crossed the paths and bypaths of personal and professional life with an impressive moral grandstanding.

He felt a mortal strain to his sense of uprightness. Sitting on the last seat amidst the vilest revelers, he decided to teach them a lesson. As the bus stopped at a non-descript station in the countryside, he raised a terrible alarm ‘Bomb-Bomb’ and made way for the exit as if flying away from definite doom. He fell on the steps with his face down and his back offered a nice ramp for the fellow passengers to escape into the dark outside. The bus was empty within a minute and Fauji was the sole passenger lying painfully facedown on the steps. From a distance, they waited eagerly for Fauji to be blown away with the bus. There was no blast for five minutes and they slowly came nearer. They got him up and enquired about the bomb. A lot many of them looked eager to start the second installment of punishment. But then a sane voice intervened. ‘His back has enough horses galloping on it for the day. Leave him!’ He was given a safe corner. Later on, Fauji seemed to lose his sense of discipline. He turned cranky and at loggerheads with any sense of order.

A Visit to the Town

 

These are the times of big things and big issues. If you ride a little vehicle like scooty then you have to accept your humble position and agree to whatever inches of the road by the edges that may be granted to you by the bigger, faster vehicles. A car parked by the side will suddenly take a turn and deprive you of even the thin line of your travel along the road’s margin. A window may suddenly pop open giving you the scare of life.

I am going to the town and a liquor lover is asking for a lift. He is standing right in the middle of the road. When he found that I am crossing him without paying heed to his orders, he takes a swipe at my helmeted head. I duck and give myself credit for being alert enough to avoid going dusting at his feet. Further on, you have a non-confident dog looking to cross the road. It almost did what the drunkard had failed to do. Well, there are confident dogs as well, who just step back wisely as you press the horn. By the way, the very same are the categories of the humans crossing the road.

A woman is getting down from the bus with her face backwards and the helpless conductor shouting, ‘Look saamne, saamne!’ She tumbles down as the bus is still in a snaily motion. Luckily, there is no harm done and she gives a sheepish, embarrassed grin. A few people gather around and give her a nice lecture about how to properly get down from a slowly moving bus.

The most challenging task is to avoid a little school boy from scoring a goal. Bored with school after two years of Covid-forced holidays, and not in the habit of attending classes anymore and hence in a terrible mood, he tries to beat his boredom by kicking a coconut shell. He is all for playing football with an empty coconut. My vehicle is surely the goal. I turn sharply at the last moment and he misses it. Misses a goal and kicks dust with a dejected face.

Then I have to overtake a tractor discotheque. The tractor itself makes so much of noise and coupled with huge woofers and speakers it unleashes a tornado. The main beneficiaries of the music, if at all, are those at least a mile off. I cross it with much trepidation. It’s almost like getting across a fighter jet.

Randhir, the farmer, is coming back from the town. He feels best while plying his tractor, so in good mood he waves at me. His BP has been recorded to fluctuate between 40 and 240 and he passes off almost every fortnight. But he feels safe while driving his tractor. ‘The bumps and jerks keep the body shaking and I am at my best!’ he explains the reason for loving tractor riding. So he doesn’t miss an opportunity to go plying his tractor.

In the town, the banjaras have pitched tents along the road. They have a nice way out to handle the civic body officials. They too want to settle down now after those centuries of wanderings. They have national flags flying from their huts and tents. A few have cows also tethered in front. It stops the civic authorities from treating them merely as stateless ruffians. Nationalism sells well these days and they have as much a right to affirm their credentials as any other internet patriot.

A policeman has parked his car on the road and there is a traffic jam. Many people mutter their grumbling dissent under their breath only. You have to respect police even if they park their private vehicles right in the middle of the road. Small vehicles carry advantages also and I somehow squeeze through.

In the grain market, a merchant shares his philosophy. His servant is busy in cleaning his master’s brand new car. The business is slack and there is no work for the servant so the Lala has got him to the task of cleaning his already shining car. ‘Never leave a servant free!’ he tells me the mantra of his success. I get a few moments for a talk with the car-cleaning servant. ‘Haan ji ki naukri, Na ji ka ghar!’ he shares his philosophy. Well, both credos seem complementary to each other in the world of business.

If you are lazy to go visiting your town regularly and instead club your multiple tasks in a single visit, you will return at twilight only. There are shrieks and screeching of the noisy spotted owlets as I open the gate. They love jumping out while it’s still some minutes left for the fading light of the day and scare the people with their hideous shrieks and squeaks. It sounds like they are condemning my returning in one piece on a little vehicle, riding on a road that has been hijacked by the bigger ones.

Never commit the mistake of being absent for the entire day, especially if there are monkeys around. The garden is vandalized. The banana frond is decimated. It seems an intentional ravage. They are showing the best population growth rate at the moment. There are monkeys-monkeys everywhere. Does nature have a counter? Younger lithe males are trying to break into the established harems of the old rascals. Short on love, a young rascal settled for a very old, shrunk, tailless monkey lady. He was earlier thoroughly bashed up by the huge alpha male so the beaten Romeo settled for a harem discard. If they are off the scene even for an hour, you come to understand what peace really means.

A bat hovers around. The twilight is preponed slightly as it’s overcast. It loves to suck juice from the big dark scarlet cone of the banana flower. It seems to love doing shirashana as it hangs upside down from the pointed end of the cone. It’s miraculous that the cone is still dangling intact after the monkey’s free play in the garden.

The kittens are waiting for their milk. They are both males by the way. They now have a cheeky girlfriend. She is very clever. They love her company and their priorities seem to have shifted quite a bit. They have given her an unrestricted access to their milk bowl. They no longer sleep together curled up in a brotherly ball. There is a girl in the equation now. Maybe they are jealous of each other and are looking for some private space.                     

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.