Solitary trails

 

August rains have been far more in intensity and volume than the normal mark for the month. The solitary trail is overgrown with grasses, reeds, weeds and shrubs. One has to walk very cautiously at each step to avoid naughty snakes. It indeed is a solitary trail -- with one exception. A lone man rubbing hemp leaves on his palms to collect the black soot on palms that will turn to weed. Mother nature has been kind to him. Long rows of wild hemp plants on both sides. He will collect a few beedis worth of weed on his palms. 

He is a silent, peaceful man, gently working on the leaves. He is not overcautious like most of the so-called tee-tootlers who don't touch meat, wine, drugs and weeds. But they carry their own nasha of power, influence, wealth and politicking. This silent man readily agrees to get videoed and photographed, just making a little request to not put on 'net-pet' as he puts it. 

Weed inhalers are generally laidback people, not harming mother earth with their overblown worldly aspiration. Yes, they harm their own interests and their family's. But they aren't too spirited participants in the chaos that is being splashed around by the so-called sensible gentry. 

I don't support and encourage weed smoking. But these people are cool in their own ways provided they keep it balanced with their duties to themselves and their families. It would be an icing on the cake if they decide not to get married because marriage is a big responsibility and if you get married you ought to get yoked into fulfilling all responsibilities instead of getting into a relaxed trance. Marriage plus weed smoking don't go together.    

The green, shimmering, sashaying gown of mother earth fluttering to monsoon winds on my solitary trail. 

Sarus cranes are a symbol of lifelong fidelity. In a world where real love is getting pushed into the corner each passing second, the sight of a crane couple in lush green is nothing short of an auspicious sign. It's a shy couple. They just kept walking and didn't allow the gap to be decreased by my curious steps. 

A friendly drongo. She isn't camera shy and allows photoshoot from close quarters. Definitely a confident, good looking girl of the drongo world. 

This is what remains of the last natural wetland in the countryside around my village. Earlier it was a vast swamp covering many acres that would attract thousands of ducks and other migratory birds during monsoon and winters. Now just a tiny puddle with a few moorhens, ducks and a couple of kingfishers peeking into its sad waters from the wires nearby.  

Kaka maharaj got angry about something and left his hut for a new place. This hut hosted him for more than two decades. The tiny hut is now getting mixed with nature as grasses and shrubs grow with full freedom around it.  

The handiwork of weaverbird boys to invite girls to have a look and if they like it accept the suitor and settle for domestic life for the season. Some romeos have put great effort in elongating the grassy foyer to a great length. It's always a fight for the most beautiful girl through most impressive means of wooing. .  

The solitary trail  is indeed a solitary trail now. Clad in grasses and reeds like a shy countryside lass. A lovely musty solitary feel on it. You just inhale musty silence and sweating peace here. And each slow step counting as meditation.  

The mountains come to my solitary trail in the form of river sands. Their slopes broken by the rainfed angry rivers and the sand arriving here in the form of canal sand. You can feel the essence of Himalayas in this sand. Take a fistful and smell. Yes, it's Himalayan smell. 

My dear friend silk cotton tree is happy at last. Couple of years back the sand mafia had scraped too much earth from around its trunk cutting many main roots. It turned sad and stood with its pale leaves. No fresh shoot, no flowers for two years. No smiles. Now the monsoon has been more than normal this season. The tree wears a new green suit like a handsome man freshly in love. So happy to see and meet him. Shook hands with him. I'm sure he will smile this winter with his luscious red flowers. 

Tears and black flowers

 

They emerge from the prodigality of entanglements, like mushroom sprouts from the savage and fertile humus in the human soul. Destiny chuckles with perfidious pleasure as it pushes them onto the stage—faceless, no defined character role, just fuddle-muddle-headed lousy slow-creepers among the smart stampede of noticeable boots. Most of them are pushed by abhorrent native circumstances. And they somehow float into relatively better parts, their existence as trivial as slut, scum and scamp. They move tactlessly, all of them bearing the marks of ravaging thunderbolts back home—civil wars, genocide, hunger, poverty, natural calamity, systematic targeting and the likes. All of them sharing the same pool of ineffaceable memories of pain and suffering. Destiny holds them tight. They are mere harnessed horses pulling at the traces and pathetically biting at the bits as if to douse their hunger with it only.

They come from different regions and religions but look the same—poor scum of the society. Snatchily squelching in the survival sludge, they chatter in various unknown dialects. But it’s the same language, the same script of poverty. It’s the same sobbing choir. They might be Rohingyas, Bangladeshis, Nepalese or anyone from the poorest parts of India. They share their very own unique nationality of disadvantages, oppression and exploitation. They simply barge in to survive, to stay alive. They aren’t welcome but they smartly swim in the stench of sewage drains, rapaciously picking up the discards like these are tasty, pickled raw vegetable slices. They pick up and eat and accept anything at which even the poorest local won’t even look. They do this so that they are seen to survive without giving competition to anyone. They pick up what even the native rag pickers won’t touch.

They know that capacious ears get pricked up to catch their presence. They stoop so low that no one feels slighted by their presence. Their glum disposition would enable you to see through them like you would through a pig. Thoroughly gnawed and devoured, they scamper stealthily like big rats in the sewage lines. Then sometimes malice and temptation catches a few of them, inflicting a cold-blooded derangement to the logical part—a small section where some sense still exists despite such horrible emotional trauma—in their poverty-knotted brain. In chocking resentment, depressed and downcast, the horribly miserable being slays someone’s good fate. Some crime is committed.

Ceasefire and reconciliation

 

We have been turning on our heels in antipathy—he moving away with a snarl and me with mouthfuls of cuss words holding something in my hand to ward off any potential attack from his side. But the profoundly irresistible dislike for him has melted a bit after his dusk-time play with the newly dug pole. The next time when I see him I offer a good banana. His imperial majesty looks suspiciously. In any case he will steal, I think, so it’s better to offer one myself and gather some good points in his books. The supreme monarch of the simian kingdom in the village is aware of the risks of fruit traps by the humans. Huddled in utter detachedness to my ceasefire offer, he simply looks away. I’m again on the verge of faltering, capitulate and cave into anger about his not accepting my gift. But somehow I retain my composure and leave the banana on the compound wall. He arrives casually after some time—as if he didn’t know about the banana and merely found it on the way. What attitude! He sniffed at it with extra-dilated nostrils. Vah, the royal connoisseur of the olfactory art! He accepted it in an off-hand manner as if his highness has done me a favor by doing so. I’m relieved that I have bought peace for just one banana—no broken branches, no angry snarls, no foul words, no mangoes mangled on the floor.

A couple of days later I see a lady monkey with her infant. Driven by the far-flung memories of encounters with monkeys, my initial impulse is to scare her away using hard words, stomping of feet, brandishing a stick and a lynching tongue well in toe. She makes a sound which only a mother can, a kind of request to hold my temper because her little one is there. Her red face peering at me from a space in the roof railing. I hold back my reaction and immoderately throw a guava on the roof. Immediately I see him emerging from his secret watch post. He claims the peace booty. So he was watching me! I hold another guava for the mother monkey, but two monkey lads—teenagers, his sons from the previous season of love—smartly gallop and one of them claims it. Meantime, he gives me an avid scrutiny from a distance. Ahaa the art of autumnal armistice in the monsoon season! It scoops a handful of pleasure and peace for both parties.

He sits solemn and recalcitrant while his brood is enjoying within limits. A miracle! His old wife, the one with the infant, has her tail missing. There are two young boys and one young second wife. I’m not in a querulous mood today; as a result neither are they. All of us play our parts in conflicts. If both sides don’t add their share, peace prevails. He sits like a monarch—with astute magnanimity. His lads fidget and dolt around, crawl on a cable to reach a tree outside the yard and pluck leaves and buds to eat. I laugh at their antics and natural laughter makes one amiable and solicitous. All this is harmony-augmenting stuff. Today I have not given them a fright; they haven’t reacted on their part. I know he is stealing glances at me while I’m suffused with the wonderful sight of his tailless wife showering maternal affection on her baby. She is relaxed and lies belly down, legs dangling on both sides of the parapet wall, her tailless pink bottom gleaming under the monsoonal sky, her chin supported on the wall, the baby playing in front of her face; tranquilly and lugubriously she braces it behind the ears to find out any lice. This is all-surpassing love and affection.

There are no stony stares and distrustful eyes, no scandalous alertness, no sly ingenuity, no tenacious passions, no gratifying deceit. Just a normal world with pulsating excursion. A soft and supple world that can easily turn treacherous and ferocious if we don’t hold our respective parts of peace. They are enjoying on the terrace. Today I don’t make them feel that they are marauding thugs; don’t snivel and dribble with cuss words. He has a despondent and limpid grimace on his face. I have to go to my den on the terrace. I’m moving up the open staircase with a book and the day’s newspaper in my hand. As I reach the landing, I see him moving along the railings just three-four feet away. There are no glowering looks on either side, just traces of timidity. He just double checks by sniffing in the direction of the book and moves away slowly and sits on the wall, his back to me, assured that I don’t mean any harm.

His brood is playing but surprisingly they haven’t raised the usual ruckus. I think like Moi and Noah tried to come to terms with each other’s presence in the ape movie, we both also should try to come to terms with the reality of our respective existence. I have to understand that he simply is a father fighting for his family. Theirs is a big fight for survival in the concrete jungles. I can’t expect them to be well behaved all the time. But are we ourselves as such? So I can try to buy peace like I did this time with a banana, two guavas and a behavior missing reprimanding words.

All of us should try to buy peace. It’s not costly; hate, anger and wars are very costly on the other hand. They burn relationships and countries. Let the bigger issues be decided by big authorities. I shall prioritize buying peace with the monkeys in lieu of some fruits. I mean with this group at least. They keep moving across the localities. But for the fresh truants I reserve my right to act, behave and jump in the usual ways when they will arrive to slay peace. And I’m sure they will.  

In the slow rural lane

 

A bright morning always has been the stuff of legend—even on sultry, humid monsoon days when the sun seems to accentuate the musty torture. The morning sun cuts through the humid air; the sunrays seep through the humidity as if checking the proliferation of poetic anachronism pervading in this little yard. The peregrina flowers are abloom with narrative vigor. Tiny crimson clusters playing cultural cameos for a brief time. The lemon green butterflies are busy among the flowers as if holding musical dialogue with them. The small crimson flowers hold their jam, soup and syrup on the breakfasting table. Happy breakfasting you little chits of flying colors!

Poets are merchants of dreams. I copiously inhale my profits from the sight. Beyond the stony walls of the gawky and showy world, I marvel at the unrestrained seduction of the butterflies by the flowers offering their nectar with graceful candor. Then my eyes go to the ground and meet a sight—sad and sweet. A tiny classical tragedy spun by death and its heartless desertions. My emotion is sweetly sorrowful. I pick it up. A dead butterfly. It’s not deeply disquieting as death usually is when beheld from such close quarters because the colors of a dead butterfly are still peppered with sweet life-giving allusions. Your eyes become luminous when you hold a butterfly even if it’s a dead one.

Life and death are always engaged in melancholic-joyful, lengthy-short, haunting-uplifting, bitter-sweet tussle of duality. A butterfly carries its colors with such astonishing simplicity! I hold the fresh butterfly corpse bearing the trademark of colorful flirtations with life. The rest of her ilk are busy among the flowers with elegant gaiety, unmindful that one of them lost the air in her wings and fell down. I’m sure it was a painless journey for the winged beauty. As I hold it in my hand, I catch the sight of a bright blue kite stranded in the top branches of a prickly keekar. Monsoon storms have mercilessly chaffed at its once flying self. The kite also flew with charming airy anecdotes, scurrying off in different directions, challenging the power of the holding cord. Aflame with desire for freedom, it swayed with suppleness and airy assiduity. Well, it had its mundane magic and handful of revelry.

Life is only about playing for big (or small) stakes. It’s our choice basically. Some have easygoing disposition, others are loquacious with an ever-faltering composure. The butterfly corpse is still endearing and demure with its feminine colorful liveliness. I give it a leaf burial.

The sky is full of dragonflies. They feast upon midges and mosquitoes. The bee-eaters and swallows scoop up the dragonflies. Relentless tragedies side-by-side to vibrant ecstasies. And the sepia-tinted trilling call of a bee-eater is a treat to my ears. How will this vocal beauty emerge if not for this game of life and death? Though steeped in commonness and stashed in ordinariness, everything is magically so-so special. And like snuffy scholars we have to seek and shape that beauty with our eyes, our heart, our sensitivities.

‘We have seen a big black snake just near your gate!’ many people have warned me. I can understand their spasmodic delirium at the sight of a snake even if it’s non-poisonous. I take their information with a pinch of salt. I expect it to be a harmless rat snake. A dangerous krait won’t usually be seen in broad daylight because it’s a nocturnal guy. Moreover, it’s smaller than the ones they point out with their arms stretched out to meet many feet. This one they say is huge, so they confuse it with a cobra. But a cobra will always announce its presence with warning hisses and a taut hood. So my choice filters down to the harmless rat snake. And I’m proven right. My sister comes raising a war cry against the snakes, ‘It’s there…didn’t I tell you!’ I rush to the spot and find a big rat snake inspecting our toilet in the yard corner. Its size scares the people. Still on precaution, I thump a stick near it. It doesn’t raise a warning hood, confirming what I think of it—a rat snake not a cobra. I just beat the ground near it. It slithers out and enters a little section of the covered drain in the yard formed under the steps leading to the toilet. It sneaks into the tiny culvert. My sister is jittery with fear, so I push a stick into the narrow inlet and prod it out from the other end. It slithers away with its curvy, crawling majesty.

A rat snake is very fast. It just vanishes from your sight in a moment. I think it will return at night. It is most welcome to stay hidden during the day and thus not scare the family females. But I know the benefits of its presence. I haven’t seen even a single mouse in months with this resident reptile around. And no frogs as well. During the monsoons there would be so many frogs in the yard that they would even challenge my right of an evening stroll after the meals. They would keep bumping against my feet during the pensive walks. They even leave a sticky substance on collision with you. It isn’t good for one’s skin. No frogs, no mice—welcome my snake friend!

But one frog is very clever. It entered the house while very young. It’s an old country house where a frog can hide with safety. It’s grown up now. I hear its adolescent croak at the dinner time from some hidden corner. It feeds upon fleas and other insects so need not go out and risk its life. O yes, forgot to mention it. I saw a cute little baby monitor lizard in the store. It isn’t gavera, linked to the myth of a poisonous reptile, as they say, which can kill a person. It has harmful bacteria only in its saliva. I am not too bothered about it. I hope it will go out when it comes of age.

A visit to the Ivy Cottage, Mr. Bond's place

 

Being an avid Bond fan, I once thought of writing him a letter—a real handwritten one posted through the traditional mail. Just the typical Ruskin Bond image sitting and looking from his window for inspiration is enough to lighten my being. He has written for fifty years from the same spot. What stability! I usually go to bed after reading some pages from his collections. It makes the world feel so simple beyond all complexities. Long time back I almost met him. Well, that is a good story in itself. Recently I thought of acting on my resolution of writing him a letter—a real handwritten one—and post it with one of my books. I’m scarcely confident about my handwriting but here I wrote carefully like a secondary school boy. The letter was never posted. The other day I saw it in the sheaf of papers and thinking of doing it some justice I reproduce it here:

Dear Bond Sahib,

Hope your cutely funny bone is still strong enough to help you keep going on the literary path. We need it. I’m an old man—into my fifth decade—pretending to be a child in my excitement while writing to one of my favorite authors.

I have seen you once in real life. In fact we had a short talk. It was in the autumn of 2006 or 2007. I climbed up the hill to reach your place, Ivy Cottage. And what a timing it was in terms of my arrival! There you were at your favorite window, restfully looking into the misty distances in the valley below. I’m an uncouth person—almost. I startled you by hollering some crazy fan lines from the road below. I hardly knew what I was shouting in childish nervous excitement. But I remember I had also piped, ‘Thanks for giving us so much lovely literature sir!’ Well, this I clearly remember. Probably it got you out of the marveling eerie born of my muddle-headed verbal volley from below. You were generous enough not to pour water on me. ‘Come sometime when I’m free,’ you gently said. How I wish I was some butterfly or a sparrow and land on your window sill to find out if you are free!

 

Well guys, the unsent incomplete letter carries a strange sad charm. Isn’t it?

Recently I thought of giving it a try to meet Bond Sahib. I plan to stay at Mussoorie for a couple of days and try my luck.

I’m walking on the Mall Road looking for a suitable accommodation. Something catches my attention. A glimmer of hope. It’s a small hotel named ‘Write Star’. Very attractive name so I go in. Something in celebration of writers, a rarity. And a writer looking to spend a night would obviously go to a hotel named as such. The boy at the reception has watery eyes and a guilty startled look, possibly due to being new to the job. I enter the tiniest lobby, hailing their naming sense in hyperbolic terms. But my enthusiasm startles him even more. After he uses all his brain to make a sense of my congratulating eulogy for their name, he manages to say, ‘Yes sir, Bright Star is a good name.’

Well, he thought they are named Bright Star! My mood dampened and I came out and started to walk up the Mall Road. I intended to stay very near to Bond Sahib’s residence, popularly known as Ivy cottage, to maximize my chances of spotting him.

It was a literary pilgrimage from Library Chowk to Ivy cottage, Landour on Lal Tibba hill. As I said I made it a goal to at least see the literary prince of the famous hill station, if not meet him personally. He is ninety and deserves to spend his time in the way he deems fit. So I thought of basing myself at some modest hotel in Landour Bazaar, a little down the hill from his residence. Packed like a mule I walked almost 6 km uphill, panting and exhausted. When was meeting with famous writers easy?

There I stood on the narrow road by the famous cottage whose window overlooking the Doon valley has opened so many pages of simple, beautiful stories, notes and sketches. From the frustrating chaos, Ruskin Bond, with his famous ease and poise in life, draws our simple, charming, funny, witty strands to spin lovingly flowing threads of simple words, which he uses to weave beautiful stories. He makes life look so easy and tolerable. In fact reading him at bedtime is almost healing in nature. It calms down your nerves. After a hard day his words have provided balmy support during cold, dreary nights. I feel like thanking him personally.

His house has changed a lot since the last time I remember it. It’s gratifying to see a writer’s economic fate taking a healthy shape. Ivy cottage looks very impressive now with new front tiling and fresh paint. I think they have added another floor. It looks a safe and happy place, solid and equipped to shelter and protect an old writer and his adopted family. It has a solid roofing now, in contrast to the corrugated tin roof that had given in on a stormy night, pouring water into his study. Now there were more impressive windows looking into the misty valley below.

Right in front of his house I had a brief talk a man whom I found sitting by the road on the bend. He turned out to be a kabadi wala. He tells me that he gets an opportunity to go to his study to collect old newspapers and other paper waste that he might consider to discard. He tells me that Ruskin sahab is still in possession of sharp wits and can walk enough to attend to his private needs.

The narrow, steep staircase ascending right from the road seems inviting. But as you crawl up to the small landing and look at the main door, a quite, respectful message on a plaque softly whispers to you to protect his privacy by not buzzing the doorbell. I hardly stand a chance of getting admitted. Then a group of about ten young men, fresh-faced collegiates, appeared on the scene. As the college boys enquired about meeting him, I sensed my chance of sneaking with them. He is children’s and young boys’ and girls’ favorite author. I think maybe he will oblige these young flowers. So I encouraged them to queue up on the stairs and somehow pluck out a chance to go inside. I positioned myself in the middle of the line so as to troop in with the young students.

They were well-behaved boys, lovers of books; not the ones who arrive here on thundering bikes with flashy girlfriends sticking to their backs and then go on to loosen the bed hinges in cheap hotels, spurting stains on the bed sheets, filling the waste bins with used condoms. I think in entire Mussoorie that day these were the ten odd boys, well behaved and lovers of books who came to meet Ruskin Bond. I am sure all of them will do well in their lives.

‘Please don’t ring the bell’—we are staring at the request. The polite author is still better in not putting a warning sign such as ‘Beware of dogs!’ They are decent boys. Reading the plaque none of them dares to break the rule and press the doorbell. We were whispering encouragement to each other to give a slight knock at the door instead. That won’t break the rule written on the plate. Then their maid came upstairs, squeezing through the crowded stairs. She was visibly irritated. Who would take the extra trouble of attending almost a dozen uninvited guests? She went inside carrying our request to at least see him from a little distance and just pass greetings.

She returned after a moment and told us that Mr. Bond was away. He was at Dehradun for his grandson’s birthday and would be available at Cambridge school on Saturday. We were knocking at his door on a Sunday—long way off the mark. But the boys had their fan moments, a very diluted one though. I talked to them as the self-published author of about 20 books. Since they were already in that fan mode, they readily accepted my writer status. We held a little discussion about the pleasure of reading. I gave them tips about writing and shared my favorite books and authors with them. They even took a selfie with me.

Ruskin Bond’s house on Lal Tibba hill is a great literary landmark at the crest of the queen of hills, Mussoorie. Having read many of his books, I could easily identify the places that have inspired his stories. So wandering through Landour bazaar, clock tower, church, post office, camel back road and cemetery gave me a surreal feeling of being in his tales personally for the next two days. It’s sad that I couldn’t see him at least. Although his maid says he is in Dehradun, but maybe he was chuckling from behind the door while he passed this innocent lie. But it was nice to have a feel of the places that have inspired the stories of one of India’s greatest and most admired living writers. Well, as I said, 18 years ago he had dodged me when I had caught him sitting in his famous window. It was a smaller world then. Mussoorie was far less crowed. His house looked pretty ordinary. And when I harked his attention he mischievously said, ‘Come sometime when I’m free.’ Well there is always another time and I’m hopeful.          

Considering with care

 Some parts are extremely fragile in us, our Achilles heel. Stay guarded about them. That’s where we need family, friends and partners to help us defend these weakest fronts.

Similarly, some parts are extremely hard in us. The sharp edges. We have to mind them to avoid those near us getting pinched and cut by them. Or we can use these hard edges to defend the weak, soft spots of our near and dear ones.

The rest part of us comprises plain normal, the lukewarm good-bad of life, the normal pitch on which we usually play. This is actually our living room where we spend most of our time.

As long as we are mindful of each other’s hard and soft spots, we can have a very lively time in the normal big part of ourselves.    

The BPL Card

 

It’s May and wheat harvesting is proceeding under the tyrannical fits of a blazing sun. The summers are getting hotter each passing season; the springs arrive with lesser flowers; the autumns have less windfalls simply because trees are vanishing; and the winters are losing their chilly pinch. We seem to have internecine conflict with mother nature, the same mother that gives us birth and nurtures us. The interminable monotony of growth models unrivalled; the capricious ingenuity to further dent mother nature. The economic models are basically the schemes of profligacy in which the rich are getting richer and the poor turn poorer. According to a survey, just forty wealthiest Indians hold wealth equal to that owned by 700 million people collectively. India might be gearing for five-trillion economy but this hardly matters to the millions of poor Indians. There are white-collar crimes that further tilt the scale in the favor of the moneyed class. Everything related to the poor people is getting into a pell-mell situation. So there are vertical towers of soft, upstanding class and horizontal slum-spreads of hard, down-standing people. But these ‘soft’ and ‘hard’ categories are just apparent surface realities. In deep reality, the poor people are very brittle, they crumble and scatter; the rich possess the hardness of wealth to give them a steel armor. But there is one occasion when the rich and the poor stand in the same queue, carrying the same worth—the election day.

The Government of India runs Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PM-GKAY), a kind of mass charity or bhiksha to make the beggary masses atmanirbhar by providing food grains to migrant, poor laborers and below poverty line families. Well, how will you make a beggar self-standing by giving him 5 kg food grains per month is quite a mystery to me. It also provides subsidized food grains at 2-3 rupees per kg from fair price shops under National Food Security Act. These are provided to Below Poverty Line Families (BPL) and Priority Households (PHH) who are issued a special ration card to help them avail this paltry grocery to keep the fire going in their kitchen.

I need Rashe Ram’s services for a task. I call him. I’m relieved that his number is working and his tiny handset is intact. His voice comes with overwhelming despondency from the remotest desolate corner. He sounds drained out, sounds indifferent and complaisant. He is cutting wheat so that they can store wheat for the season. I’m surprised to hear this. These days the daily wage laborers in the village avoid taking this soul-sapping brutal work with sickle because they get free and subsidized ration and use the spared energies for other wage tasks. The two brothers (both unmarried) and their widowed mother are cutting wheat furrows to get enough wheat in storage that would last a year. The youngest brother works at a needle factory at a paltry monthly income. It saves him from the sun and rain at least, he says. His wife rests at home and freshens up to launch reinvigorated tirade once the workers arrive home. That seems to be her task, which she takes very seriously as is proved by her shrill harangue that subdues all other lesser noises in the neighborhood. All in all, it’s a poor family, very poor I should say.

‘You don’t get free and subsidized ration?’ I’m scandalized. ‘No!’ the gentle giant demurely replies. The bizarreness of it strikes me. I have seen rich landowners (from the village standards at least) taking away bundles of free ration, most of them on bikes, and some even in cars (can you believe it?) so that at least their buffalos may eat that ration. My head spins as I realize that their cattle are eating a human’s share.

Morality, law and ethics are scrunched under boots by those who can manipulate the system at their level. They simply fix with the village head to get a free ration card even though they don’t fulfill even a single eligibility condition. Law is crunchy and crispy. It gives a nice grating, surrendering sound under thick boots of the strong. But it easily pierces the naked foot soles of the poor. So the local gentry has a heyday on the date of free distribution. Plunder, pillage, desecration, savagery, debauchery of the strong and the mighty—seeping from the top lions to the neighborhood bullies. I have a vision of poor Rashe Ram and his family—mute like a flayed sheep. They are undoubtedly the most eligible family for a free ration card in the village. And they don’t have it, while literally everyone from car-owning richies to the bike-owning filthies is having this almost ubiquitous item. You just wish for it; and there you have it.

To be eligible for it the annual family income should be less than 1,80,000 rupees. Theirs won’t reach even one lakh from all sources even if we add the sum of their mother’s own housework at the most exorbitant pay scale of a housemaid. The household is headed by a widow (another prominent eligibility condition); they have no assured means of subsistence or social support; two brothers are uneducated and single with no socio-economic support; they are far lower down the caste hierarchy; they are landless agricultural laborers, earning livelihood on a daily basis in the informal sector (which isn’t regular in the strict sense and work comes randomly not amounting to more than half of the month, the rest of the time they are idle). It’s an ideal below poverty line family deserving a free ration card—more than anyone else in the entire village—but they are left out. The system can be—usually is—merciless. I’m hit by piercing remorse and torturing anguish. My cloister morals nudge at my overwhelming poetic lassitude. I can feel how it feels to be denied your right.

I ask them to bring their documents. ‘And don’t forget to carry the registered mobile number for the Family ID!’ I emphasize. The government has futuristic conceptualization—digitalization. Every household must have a Family ID linked to a registered mobile number. His brother—a lanky, stoic fellow whom I have never seen speaking—stands in front of me with chronic somnolence. He has their documents in a green polythene bag, faded, jaded, frayed and holed. Poverty has a peculiar inertia. It will seep into torn polybags and prevent the fresh ones from replacing them even if these are available for free. I take out the documents. They carry the dog-eared smell and myth of poverty. Poverty gives spankings. It mollifies all confidence and courage with comic candor. One stands guiltily as if just by being poor he has committed a crime.

I drive the bike with virtuous and upright air. The lanky boy pillion rides with his documents, almost weightless and invisible, shaped by the grating struggle of hard labor on construction sites and agriculture farms. We reach the SARAL Kendra at the village’s other end that facilitates such tasks. I broach the subject to the young man operating it. He belongs to the village itself and runs his operations from a room in the village chaupal. Karne (real name Karan but who bothers about the real name of a poor man) stands in a corner with a mournful autumnal air. He wants to be invisible. I share the poverty-shaped bleeding reminiscences of this poor family. ‘And still they don’t get free ration and I see even people with cars carrying away free ration like loot!’ I’m at a loss of words.

The guy is slightly acquiescing but cold and taciturn to begin with. ‘Give me the registered mobile number for their Family ID,’ he says with professional air. The number is the key to the digital portal. No number, no entry to the digital world. Karne shares the number with lots of effort at mustering courage. As a poor man you hardly believe yourself to be a full human. You think you are sub-human and that makes you guilty and at loss of all normal sense of dignity. The man tries to log into their account. ‘Share the OTP!’ he demands suddenly and sternly. Karne is all focus on the tiny basic handset. No OTP. I fear the number is dead for not being recharged for a long time. No balance. The SARAL Kendra guy looks exasperated and peers at me as if to say what a dunderhead you have fetched here. I’m not the one to bungle even the slightest chance here—at least in this episode. My smartphone is the saving grace for both me and Karne. I take a chance and recharge their number. It buzzes back to life. Money is more important than even air these days. Dead phones come alive with money fed online. There is an OTP. Good news. I’m elated. Our efforts are bearing fruit. ‘Thank God the number wasn’t closed forever!’ I’m full of gratitude to the almighty.

‘In the Family ID records their annual income is shown to be three lakh rupees,’ he drops the bombshell. ‘This is the biggest digital lie!’ I lose my breath and fumble with words. Karne’s head must be swimming with shock after hearing this mountainous sum. They don’t earn even a third of it. He is sympathetic to my vexation. ‘See there are about 800 free ration cards in the village and not more than five or seven are eligible in reality,’ he is very honest about it. It’s easy business. The village head doesn’t want to antagonize anyone applying even if he has a big house, car, tractor, AC or large landholding. The personnel from the Block Development Office usually don’t come to inspect the applicant’s socio-economic status. Signatures of the village head, a member of the village council, the local government school principal and another committee member do the job. In fact the kind boy running the village SARAL Kendra himself puts the signatures of all these people to further facilitate the process and allow governmental charity to reach each and every home. In this scenario, whoever applies gets a free ration card and you have a big crowd on the day of free distribution.

Here my dollops of witticism won’t help me. I have no problem regarding ineligible people getting free ration. It’s a far bigger game—country level—so let the mighty lions handle it. They know it and if they are comfortable with it, I have no reasons to object. My only issue is that a truly deserving poor family should also get its due in the scheme. ‘Get an affidavit in his mother’s name declaring her status and income,’ he instructs the logical course of action. I feel mettlesome in spirit on this particular day. So there we go to the town to get the affidavit typed on a stamp paper. The notary is a full-of-mischief chatty guy. As his assistant types the affidavit he is giving most ingenuous schemes to a man whose wife has gone to her parents after getting beaten and he also getting thrashed by her brothers as retaliation. He is giving very crooked plans to use the law for the man’s benefit. Then he looks keenly at a cowering Karne and throws an advisory gem, ‘He looks mentally retarded, we can write this as well.’ For the first time I see some reaction on Karne’s face but he keeps silent. ‘He is at least mentally sounder than you,’ I’m about to say but let it go.

We return to the village with the new affidavit safely tucked among the old smelly papers. The affidavit needs his mother’s thumb impression. But we cannot locate her. We scan all the poor localities to find her, thinking she must have gone to some woman friend in one of the poor neighborhoods. We turn the cap inside out but to no avail. Maybe she went to some agriculture farm or to cut wood, we conclude. I leave the paper with him, giving him a gel pen with loads of clearest instruction how to lace the thumb with ink and put the impression on the designated place. Inspired by the mischievous notary even I doubt Karne’s mental faculties, so emphasize each point multiple times. Even he turn restless. But all my fears are allayed when he comes back after an hour with the task done to a reasonable accuracy. A milestone crossed, we have the income affidavit. The task will be smooth now, I’m sure. We again go to the SARAL guy so that he can upload the document and further process the application.

There is a fragrant ruffling of the sense of justice in me as he hits the keys and peers into the screen. Then there are traces of discomfiture on his face. ‘Seems like they have already applied for the correction of income figure in the Family ID. But they didn’t upload the supporting document,’ he brandishes the fresh affidavit. ‘So you can upload it now,’ I gently request him, acknowledging the silver-headed staff of authority in his hand. He shakes his head firmly, ‘No it’s showing the status as pending and we cannot restart the process for this particular application number. The system doesn’t show any upload option.’ So the system is already the master of its will, I silently rue and think about my misgivings about artificial intelligence. ‘Who guided you to apply for the revision of income figure without submitting the income self-declaration in the form of this simple affidavit?’ he sternly asks Karne, waving the useless piece of paper for which we had gone speeding like formula race drivers to the town. The poor guy looks as if he is standing in the dock in a court facing some criminal charges. I come to his rescue, ‘It must have been done by his youngest brother. He is fifth pass and knows a, b, c, d,’ I save Karne. ‘Yes, he spoils everything,’ the ever-taciturn Karne breaks silence. I’m sure his anger is targeted at his sister-in-law who harangues them profusely. I hope they won’t have a fight at home, accusing each other for depriving the family of free ration.

The guy respects my focus in this episode and is at least sympathetic to my cause if not the wellbeing of Karne and his family. He gives a call to the Block Development Officer based at the town. She trusts him in all the income verification matters. As long as he is there she need not bother about unnecessary hassles of the landed farmers sticking to the point of declaring themselves below poverty line to get some free ration for their cattle. So usually she simply asks this boy to get all the signatures done without verifications and all the applicants get free rations—the relatively poor ones for their kitchen and the better placed for their buffalos. It’s not that this particular pair of SARAL Kendra guy and the BDO are committing a scandal here. It’s the norm, almost a law. The government knows it and they are comfortable about it. The more the benefits reaching to all the people, the more the chances of votes.

They hold a talk over phone. I listen still holding onto the threads of hope. She knows the case. She even remembers the widow’s name. With a sullen face the boy disconnects the call and tells the story.

If an application for the revision of income figure stays pending without uploading the self-declared income affidavit, the BDO visits the family house to verify the socio-economic status of the applicant. So she had come for the inspection. She knew that they deserve this more than anyone else in the village. People with havelis are getting the benefits, she knew it all. But on this rare real physical inspection her hands were bound by the law. It’s a pucca house, a tiny pucca house with a concrete slab roof. And to be eligible for a free ration card one must have a kacha house apart from all other eligibility criteria. ‘But all the houses in the village are pucca and even palace dwellers are getting free ration for their cows because they have kacha houses on paper,’ I grumble. ‘But in the eyes of law they are kacha houses because there was no onsite inspection of the property and in the report they are poor households even if ACs are humming inside and cars are parked in front. But this house is pucca house as the report says,’ he enunciates the law to me the ignorant.

He is genuinely sympathetic and tells that these guys are just unlucky because on the day of inspection he was away and the BDO sahiba had to personally visit the site for inspection. Had he been present in the village that day she would have simply asked him over phone without coming and he would have given a nod like the rest of the villagers. To him all are neighborhood peasants and he cannot be cruel to anyone’s application. ‘After all, it’s the farmers’ own grain that comes back to them,’ he has a point. ‘The government loots us in so many ways, so if this little bit comes back we welcome it. In any case it’s ours to begin with,’ he elaborates. I understand his point and tell the entire story behind this so-called pucca house. ‘See, let me explain this pucca house story. Till ten years back they stayed in a 30-yard hovel with their horse and bales of fodder. The horse even bit Rashe, his elder brother, on the jaw and he still carries that slurred speech due to the resultant defect. Karne himself was kicked on his back as an infant. I remember him crawling till the age of four. I suspected the kick has deformed his spine and he would crawl throughout his life. Thank God, he got to his feet! Then their lame father died in a road accident. The rich car owner paid them ten lakh rupees for the out-of-court settlement. Out of this, two lakh were pocketed by the smart lawyer who managed this settlement. The rest they used in buying a 30-yard plot and build this so-called tiny pucca house. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t the poorest in the village and they fulfill every condition to get a free ration card. Their mother is a widow. They don’t have any landed property apart from this house. They don’t have regular income. They just work as casual farm hands or construction site workers for a fortnight at the most every month because work doesn’t come regularly. Sometimes they are all without any job throughout the month,’ I baulk out their poor story, its each line seeped in poverty.

He is sympathetic and feels sorry for the episode. He calls the BDO madam again and tells her the entire story. She also is very sorry for their bad luck to have a tiny pucca house that turns them ineligible for free ration card, while swanky marble-walled houses get free ration. She then suggests a solution. She cannot prepare a report today and nullify it tomorrow. ‘There is just one solution. Can you please ask the village head to give it in written that he granted money to help them build this tiny pucca house? If he gives it written that the village council donated funds to help them then I can afford to effectively nullify my earlier report,’ she tells the SARAL Kendra guy. It’s also confided from her end that there is no other way. So we are scuttling around to find the village head who is on an outstation visit. I have serious, practical doubts that he will write this declaration. The house is a decade old and he is just one year into the job. Even he has his position to safeguard.

My frozen pessimism begins to thaw under the onslaught of cruel May heat. It oozes out and makes me swim in the current of its comic tragedy. I tell them that their only chance is to visit the village head as and when possible, with their widow mother in tow, and keep beseeching for help to raise the prospects, which they diligently do two-three times every month. I sometimes meet one of the brothers on the way to their work site and ask for any update in the matter. ‘Yes we go there sometimes and sarpanch sahab says yes he will look into the matter.’ Hard work is a big bulwark against such sensitivities of life. They are busy in the rut of life beyond the concepts of justice or injustice. But sometimes I feel the dull rumbling of sadness for their failed cause.

The bestest relaxation and sleep

 

The bestest relaxation and deepest sleep. These are hard times in a chaotic world. The more you turn others sleepless, the sounder you fall asleep. Some moments of dreamy ecstasy after tormenting birds, squirrels, lizards and frogs. The harder they make others' life in the garden, the better they sleep. So symbolic of contemporary times. 

A small tree in a poet's garden

 

Most of the people say it’s a shrub, but I insist it’s a tree—small though having slender woody stems and a thin main trunk. The fact is jatropha integerrima or peregrina is a flowering shrub. It’s bigger than a plant and smaller than a tree. If you prune it well and keep it single trunked it grows 15-16 feet tall with a luxuriant round canopy having glossy elliptic or oval leaves. Mine is about 12 feet tall if I consider the highest shoot trying to touch the sky with its flowery head. Had I kept it single-stemmed it could have gone to 15 feet and then I won’t have to defend its tree status with arguments. My peregrina has several slender trunks that inhibit its vertical growth. But vertical loss is horizontal gain. It has a domed canopy broader than the tall guys of its species. Most importantly, the slender side stems have plenty of leaves and flowers that keep their crimson smiles year around.

The little tree is always smiling with its clusters of star-shaped crimson flowers, a bright and flashy smile. Irrespective of the wars and political intrigues, there it’s with its bright smile most of the year. The flowers sharply silhouetted against, like lofty overseers, the humanoid background where everyone is trying to reach the majestic zenith with taut bosoms, whipping up mad frenzy. It’s a world where the majority is bustling, but some are relaxed and languid—like yours truly—and the latter enjoy the charm of these lovely flowers. As people prance for profiteering, huffing and puffing with their progressively worsening mood, here I’m safely holed and peacefully cornered to enjoy the bouquet of beauty offered by this little tree. Your royal majesties, you can convulse with pain for penury gain, here I enjoy the free booty of mother nature.

The scientists say that its parts are toxic. Its milky sap can cause skin inflation and rashes. Its seeds are also toxic in nature. The smoke of its leaves is also said to be harmful to our lungs. I’m happy that this little tree knows how to hit back. It does so with its numerous flowery smiles. In any case, it’s merely our human-centric view. I’m happy that it gives us a knee-kick in terms of utility. Beyond our consumerist whinnying—although it has various medicinal usages—the beauty stands proud and nonchalant. Its essence has something sweet because usually its flowers are laden with honeybees. But the honeybees are vanishing at an alarming rate. While each cluster had several of them till a couple of years back, now there is just one for several clusters. Maybe there is a tiny ball of honeycomb still surviving somewhere. That sweetens my hope a little.

It’s dreary and dismal in a horribly vindictive world. My fading enthusiasm is revived this sultry morning. The crimson blooms are extra happy today. There is a swarm of small grass yellow butterflies (eurema briggita) fluttering with exciting feminine artifice. Aha, the bounding quintessence of life! All perplexities melt. It’s a very comforting sight. They flutter jovially. Spirituous sallies in the little dense rain-fed dome. There are a few honeybees as well who sometimes butt into the butterflies. But no hard feelings like we have in the form of road rages.

I’m lost in this beautiful spectacle. Suddenly my reverie is broken by the frisky, twittering tik-tikking by the resident squirrel, the one who had arrived with her little ones a few days ago. A brown-yellow stripped feral cat is a great hunter. To the mother squirrel her little ones are the star of her eyes. A small-time writer like me has poetic sentiments. But to the cat, it’s simply food. I see the cat running away with its breakfast tucked in its mouth. Mother squirrel is inconsolable. I see the curled tail of the stolen baby sticking out of the cat’s mouth. It’s slightly bigger than the previous occasion when I saw it tucked in its mother’s mouth, its bushy tail curled sideways, mother cautiously carrying it to a new house she had prepared among the top branches of the parijat tree in the yard. Now it was again tucked up in a different mouth. The tail curled exactly like earlier.

My pitying reverie is suddenly broken. The wire-tail swallow couple almost chip away lice from my head, if there is any among the one-week old crop on my top. I think the elder chick is flying with them now and needs semi-care. They must be guarding the small chick, the latter hatch, because they have objections even against a poet marveling at the butterflies and sympathizing with a grieving squirrel.

Electrical upgrade and farmers' mood degrade

 

So the electricity department decides to install meters outside the houses to bring down the volume of electricity theft. New poles are being dug in the streets that will bear cables instead of the naked wires of earlier, which allowed the farmers to steal electricity at their will. Why do the farmers steal electricity from the wires and irrigation water from the canals? Because their income hasn’t increased over the years. To somehow make the ends meet, they have to keep buffalos and cows and for that they need fodder cutters and flour machines. These consume lots of electricity. If the farmers pay fair and square, the electricity bill will itself cover the entire monthly budget available. So now when the department is taking strict measures and installing cables and fixing meters outside on the poles in the street, the farmers obviously are very worried. As the brand new sturdy-looking cables are drawn across the new poles, the farmers are already having nostalgic hiccups for the past when the naked wires smirked with a friendly mischief for taking out unmetered share from the flow. It helped them in making their ends meet.

I’m not promoting electricity theft. The best solution is to make agriculture feasible. There is a rumor that if you have an electricity pole near your roof, you might have a little chance of taking out unaccounted units by harnessing a little chink of possibility at a joint high up on the pole. It serves as the sole beacon of hope for the overstretched peasantry. So the farmers have gone berserk. Neighbors who shared a nice evening talk only yesterday have turned foes and are fighting to get the pole dug at their point of convenience. Brawls have compounded to assaults. In one such fight, a lame woman gave a flourishing display of guts to engage in a real fight—almost an unsullied and untouched spirit to take the matters to her hardened palm, the palm that has thwacked buffalos thousands of times. As her young son got into a scuffle, she lurched forward and very soon turned the scales in his favor. Giving plenty of airy spaciousness to the angry mother in her, she started slapping randomly. Her tongue also gave a suitable company to her hands as she hurled gems of obscenities. Thin and anemic in looks, she but showed disproportionate strength and stamina. Her ostensible moustache twitching with anger, by the time the heady round was over, many cheeks carried the print of her palm’s authority.

It was disastrous for the poor laborers, as she rode roughshod over their already miserly fates. Most of them carried deep purple cheeks. Relentlessly grappling with anger, she then lunged forward to grab an iron pipe of very suitable length and weight to effect amazing punishment to human flesh. She needed this weapon to dispense justice on their bones after giving the cheeks their due share. They had to throw the weapon on a roof to avoid further blood. Who can understand the passionate nuances of motherhood? But the laborers surely can gauze its depth because they got unnecessarily beaten. So all in all it was a very busy, brawly day.

It’s followed by an early twilight under an overcast sky, a very slight drizzle falling like robust mist to provide a seamless link between the night and the day. The monkey is in a position to strategically synergize his mischief to thrilling proportions. Beyond remotest concern of any type, he sits on a parapet wall on a roof, as if on lordly edifice, just five or six feet below the pole’s top end. The earth is wet due to the rainy season. The soil is loose after being dug out and filled in hastily after putting the pole in the hole. Like we humans the simian world is also not stuck on the promotion ladder of mischief—like the rest of the species are. These two do things not just for necessity, they do majorly for vanity.

The monkey has an enlivening inspiration at the fag end of this rainy day. Imaginative pedagogy unfolding copiously. He stands on his hind-legs—like humans—holds the pole with his hands bearing highly active fingers and gives a serious shake to the pole’s top end. The pole sways as the simian momentum spreads across the new cable lines. He then watches the slow swaying with a contended muse, a fine mist-like drizzle caressing his coat. He looks so relaxed as if sitting over a splendid coffee table book. He bears a wonder-tinted look. The pole is a toy to him. When the gentle swaying of the pole and the lines stops, he gets up again and pushes and pulls the pole to restart his toy once more.

It’s the same thug who marauds our kitchen. I watch him from my yard. He is steeped in this fun for the last at least twenty minutes. It’s fun for me as well, so I don’t get catapulted into malice at his sight this time. All the villagers would welcome any chance of harm to these new poles. For obvious reasons—they have disturbed peace in the village. I’m enjoying the sight of it as much as he is enjoying the act. We might have a human-ape hybrid future—don’t forget that movie where Moi and Noah tried to find a common ground for the humans and the apes. Getting sensitized to this reality, I offer him a banana that I won’t eat without concern. It’s not in perfect shape. I hold it for him using friendly words. But my glaring mask of dogmatism isn’t enough. We have had very acrimonious brawls in recent past. He is happy with the pole-swaying game and doesn’t spoil his fun for a quarter-rotten banana offered by an enemy.

Vandalism in a poet's garden

 

One of the three rascally kittens who have forcibly taken over a village poet's garden. All the garden lizards are gone, few of them unnecessarily killed for fun, some puked out half digested forcing the poor poet to clear the mess. The squirrels lost all their kids, except one squirrel brat which doesn't dare to come down. One of the rascals is always there under the tree for a non-stop watch. The frogs mauled. They don't eat them, they just play cats and frogs. A new game. A grandfatherly bull frog used to come into the garden from outside, sneaking under the iron gate grills, after the night fell. The village poet saw it usually while having his post dinner walks to and fro like an old retired lion in a cage. The old frog, it looks really old, proved his wisdom when he stopped sneaking into the poet's yard after the dark. But last night it committed a folly. It came in. And one of the rascals had the time of his life with the old gentleman. It hopped like a springbuck and would land on the old frog as it tried to sneak out with its tired gallops. The miscreant would go scampering over the yard and would come jumping like a springbuck with firecrackers tied to its tail and there it would land on the poor frog. Look at the expectations! Wanting playmates after such sins of killing and mauling! At one point they vanished in a bushy corner and weren't seen for many minutes. The helpless poet feared for the frog's life. But they finally came out. The feline nuisance wanted the poor fellow to play with it and do the same. Somehow the frog managed to sneak out after almost 15 minutes of playful cuddling by a cat brat. The birds and nests are gone. The nostalgic poet hears only angry warning cries of birds from surrounding heights alerting one another to avoid the forbidden yard where three killers roam. The rainy season used to be the time when the yard and little garden had many birdie residents allowing the poet to watch many lovely tales of winged parents raising their kids. But this monsoon it happens to be the season of slaughter in the poet's yard. Oofs. And look at the relaxation drenching this hero! The poet wants nagraj, the big old cobra that stays in the messy clump of trees, grass and bushes right in front of the gate, to sometimes pay a visit and teach them a lesson. Nagaraj's hooded hiss will see them tumbling over in fear and maybe wet and soil their pants.

The outlook

 Don't look down upon people just because they are poor and look dirty. Every soil has its own characteristics worth gold. We try to see in others what we ourselves lack. Before condemning and degrading someone else over looks, wealth, power and position, we have already condemned our own selves for lacking the same. How will you judge anyone without having been a thorough judge of your own self. The prejudice that we cast on others is first practiced within the workshop of one's own self. How will you hate anyone if you haven't been hating yourself secretly about your supposed failures, shortcomings and expectations.