1. A Ladleful of Lilting Memories

 Cooling in the elixir of postmodernist afterglow?  There are deft strokes, steely lines and spools of songs about our achievements. But there are shadowy poles which beat the fog with their pale, penetrating light, sending some feeble messages concerning our follies. The angelic, sacred balance and equipoise has been disturbed. The natural laws have been violated and warped. Something basically wrong has happened with nature during the present scandalous times. The odds were never so much staked against life and living. The push for survival is hurtling down too rapidly, crashing through the naturally set fence of checks and balances, taking us towards the precipice overlooking the valley of death and destruction.

Have you ever seen a sparrow couple fighting out with another one, the latter having set up its nest, mated, laid eggs and waiting for hatching under the mother’s warm fur and father’s protective watch? It does happen now. The force of human touch is too strong on nature. Everything is getting humanised. And with due respect to the pardonable—beyond the realm of sin and piety—non-judgemental fights among the innocent, instinct-led lives in the animal and bird kingdoms, we can still brand this particular attack as the most gruesome one on somebody’s home and hearth to fulfil the basest of a selfish motive.

They were furiously screeching, twittering, hen-pecking their beaks into the rivals’ fur like the men-of-swords at war; their little claws trying to gouge out the opponents’ eyes. Mind you, it had all human connotations. Their rumpled feathers and crumpled fur had all the elements of a bloody street fight among the humans. And what was it for? To grab the nest! On the path of short-cutting greed, the predatory couple, eying someone’s cosy home, had ditched the fundamental principle of the species: make a new nest before you taste the freedom of love and mating leading to the duties of parenthood.  

Possibly the fact that the nest possessed the smell of human hand in making it had something to do with the things going nasty like among the supreme species of the earth. It was a barn roof made of wooden rafters and stone slabs. The box made of plywood was attached to one of the rafters. It hung there with a broad look of TO LET for free over the uncemented, brick-laid floor below.

Earlier, this transgressing couple never ever cared to look at the abandoned nest, vacant after the previous hatching, waiting for some laborious sparrow couple to sort out things for another cycle of home-making by the new entrants. Then a diligent couple arrived looking for a secure home. Finding the odour of long-left nestlings inimical to their pure, non-short-cutting instinct to procreate and preserve, they worked to bring it into order for a new homely start. Old bird-drops smitten sinews were thrown down piece by piece and new ones fixed for a brand new cosy interior. Then the eggs were laid and the expectant moments for hatching started.

Now there was a fight at hand. Perhaps, it’s the modern day norm to destroy before getting on to the next step in the journey. The way they—the attacking couple, led by their hissing instinct which easily overpowered the much mellowed down parental defence—beat out the parents waiting for the fluid in their tiny eggs to form and shape into nestlings, made them condemnable as the rogue, brutish couple. Broken shells and spattered fluid on the ground for ant-feed provided testimony to the charge against them.

The winners knew that the mourning couple will take one more day to keep fussing around the site, so unashamedly they mated on a nearby tree, fully sure of their possession of the nest. The next day, they started flitting in and out of the sinewed shelter, with spring in their flight and much mirth in their dives; making minor adjustments to the grabbed property to satisfy that primordial birdy instinct to make a new nest before drawing out procreative self’s best. Very cleverly they made those minor adjustments; gave themselves a clean chit and life started again in the nest.

Why have even birds started taking short-cuts like the humans, stepping over others’ toes in the selfish stampede, crushing others’ dreams to fulfil personal motives? Very intelligently the birds around the human world have also picked out a few paying lessons from our book of practicality. Kudos to the humanity!

******

I, a little sparrow, just out of the nest, and not even baptised, have been a witness to this happening which took place in the neighbouring man-made nest-box attached to the wood and stone-slab ceiling. Quite surprisingly, I’ve a wonderful memory to narrate the sayings of Mother almost as she did.

Now, since I’m sitting freely on a branch, I can narrate the whole story without being constantly chirp-sermonised, pecked and haggled to take first lessons in a birdie flight. Mama and Papa aren’t with me for the simple reason that both of them couldn’t withstand that hit by the ceiling fan (within a couple of days—Papa on the previous day and Mama the following day, that is yesterday) circling in air to make air out of air—and draw blood as well, if chance suited it—over, above, around, beneath the buffalos and calves in this rectangular barn with three wall sides and one side open fronting the courtyard.

Well, as soon as we were hatched and could make out the meaning of her chirping, many nestling anecdotes started. For a couple of week, we were just parting our tiny, yellow beaks to this someone who was funnily so kind and loving to these—I mean me and my sibling—ugly, hairless, soft, purplish balls. Amidst intervals in their frantic, beakful cargoeing to cater to our unceasing hunger she—Mama, I came to know—had some moments of respite:

“Your Papa and I were one day frantically scratching our beaks against the plastered walls and the ceiling of this open-fronted barn. Nowadays, it’s rare to have unplastered walls having nooks, holes and crevices for us to sneak in and make nest. It’s after all a sound, solid, smooth world of the modern-day man.

“And there are still lesser trees with holes in their trunks. You rarely find big, old, grandmotherly trees with crooked trunks these days. Ah, what a loss! The story of huge, centuries old trees was told by my mother who heard it from her mother and so on. I can spare your little head with those details. This is no longer the world for fairy tales.

“So coming back to our story, we were desperately trying to undo the smooth plasterwork with our little beaks. But beaks are no chisels. How I wish that we also develop iron in our beaks to cope with the changing times. After all, everything is changing so fast. So we just tried as hard as possible. And by the look of it, we felt sure to do with a hole in the walls just below the ceiling, around the rafter-ends.

“It is, as you can see with some care not to fall down, a stone-slab and wood-beamed roof, so we smelt our chance here. There are two iron cross-beams. The one that you see just ahead and the other you can’t—but will see later as you come out to enjoy this big world. These run along the width and the small wooden rafters supported on the beams along the length across the three sections bearing the stone-slabs make our roof. Well, that’s our roof. It’s better to know one’s roof. It’s as good as knowing the roots.

“All of us need the hole of our size. But just for utilitarian purpose, we can’t become ants to lay eggs. Harder and harder we worked for a fitting hole. I even envied the ants on the barn floor for having to bore tiny holes. But then they are themselves too small and must be having their own set of problems which we cannot see from a distance. The small must also be having their set of big problems. Our wings smeared with sweat. We could disturb spider-webs, plaster and lime whitewash only. There was little to show, except some dents in the lime-wash, in lieu of our efforts. It’s so hard to make a home inside some bigger one’s home!

“This farmer that you can steal a glance from above, tending the buffalos, cutting the grass, working on the chaff-cutter over there, and grinding wheat in that chakki—the way I do for you in my beak on a tiny scale—in that flour machine there in the opposite left hand corner, is very kind and understanding. We birds tend to make a bigger noise our little demands. It’s disproportionate to our worth and feathery stature. But quite paradoxically our noise does appear a song to the bigger world having bigger brains. So most often, even our mourning for the dead goes on to be interpreted as a song of celebration, as if in some nest the prince of the whole birdie kingdom has been born.

“There are good people, simply like there are bad people. Are they really good, or they have to put up the pretention of being good through supposedly good acts, we don’t know. Is goodness the first flash received in reaction to circumstances; or they have to labour for it? Well, these questions shouldn’t rob us of our thankfulness we should feel for this farmer boy. God bless him with all good things in life, a nice harvest, good wife and long life and a longer trail of children! He knew it was no song of ecstasy and love. It was a noise of desperation. So he thought of helping us.

“Then there are various categories of people. Some don’t listen even if they see it; some listen but don’t act; some act in a bad way; and some act positively. And God bless him with more happiness than any other human being. He not only listened but acted well also. He nailed plywood boards into this beam here in the safe corner. He fixed this box to the wood rafter away from all storms and dangers.

“There are but many takers for such safe house-letting. So a rival couple, in the same position as we, arrived just as we had staked our claim to the wooden little box by ferrying the foundational sinews. To defend this fact and to save a position of being held culpable on account of not defending our right, and thus add to the lawlessness, we maintained and secured our foothold. It was tough though!

“Now there are some people who can repeat an act of kindness even twice: who don’t turn their ears deaf and eyes blind, hands crippled and legs numb; whose mind is not seized with clapping for the already opened account of goodness; and heart is not basking and drawing moral solace from that sole deed for days on end. Defying all these simply affordable luxuries, he took another bitter swig of practicality (or maybe it was really a sweet pill to him), he made another one over there just to the other side of the iron cross-beam, where you can see the lower ends of the dangling grass sinews from its opening. Ours, however, is more favourably placed. Here you have this big swing they playfully turn on, and sometimes it gets turned off by itself; sometimes it starts again by itself and sometimes they have to put their index finger over that board!”

Well, you might complain that I, a young sparrow just out of the nest for the first time, my funny purplish body bearing a funny coat of grey-brown tufts yet to cover the whole of me, have ended up telling a whole epical story from the book of birdie mythology. But it isn’t so. It’s a simple narrative Mother told me and my little sister.

I take the onus and burden of being the elder sibling for the mere fact of my male gender, her relatively slow development, pathetic shrill cries as well as my outmanoeuvring her to grab most of the beakfuls Mama and Papa managed to get from somewhere. Where did they go, I was never able to know. To me the world meant this roof and the barn floor below; and for society, it just means the vague indication of hustling and bustling in the neighbouring nest.

I don’t know why there are so many different types of birds. Well, there must have been some pattern and reason behind all this; otherwise all bird parents will make their offsprings look the same. And Moms and Dads will have problems in recognising their children. In that case, it will turn really funny. Elders would feed wrong kids, mistaking others’ children for their own.

To some people physical requirements and convenience come first and the moral, material duties required to support the former come later. I don’t exactly understand the real meaning of it. I’ve sort of crammed it up for the sake of my all-knowing Papa, as he told me on that stormy night while the big noise from where my parents fetched grains kept we nestlings awake. It was scary!

With a mischievous glint of pride, Mama and Papa bragged that day that the other couple was just the same; while they were the opposite. Here again I just reproduce the words—for I’ve been born with a wonderful memory—chirped by Mama about the meaning of ‘opposite’:

“To us the duty comes first. The duty to support the pleasure; otherwise today’s pleasure becomes tomorrow’s pain. So before deciding to bring you two to this nest, we worked on this opening in the box. It was a bit big and risky for you little ones. We almost sewed up the opening with grass sinews to avoid a fall, leaving this nice peephole for you and a door for us. It took us weeks before we finally entered the marital life. But she, the lady in that other couple, already had eggs in her furred belly when they came to fight us.

“Hadn’t it been for the farmer boy, she would have been forced to lay eggs in open, much to the shame of birdie motherhood! So they had no time to secure their box’s opening. While the nature’s call or miscall struck at her belly and father’s head, they scampered for a couple of days to get a famished bed for the eggs and the flimsiest of a grass wall around the opening.

“Thank God, you didn’t see the consequences to the nestlings because then you were mere eggs! The day their scurrying for food started to shake the nest’s sinew wall, their future seemed almost lost. More so because the farmer’s son has a domesticated cat. A cat eats the likes of us! So always be scared of them. Now we hate cats for this fact. But we can pity her as well for we have wings. A cat can’t fly. So unless and until we become too careless to allow the cat’s earthly crawling beat our sky-high winged flight, we need not have fear at the cat front. So as youngsters, I’ll not teach you both to get crazy about the cat’s claws and make little, ineffective, hateful noises about the predator. Strengthen your wings. That is my advice.                    

“Now, before you both start hating this farmer boy for petting a cat, let me tell you that there are rats as well. And rats do a great harm to a farmer’s harvest and interests. So they have to bear with the nuisance of even a cat. You must have seen her prowling below from the strong parapet of your nest, gazing with the patience of a sage at our box. Whenever the cat had time from the rats and its mean mewing at the stray ones of her type, it stood below our neighbouring nest. It saw a chance there. The opening was too big. Its mouth brimming with water as it listened to the meaty sounds coming from behind that thin curtain of sinews and grass at the box’s opening. The nestlings were growing rapidly, as you were very slowly coming into shape inside your shells. The farmer boy knew the cat’s intentions, so not to rob him of the credit for his good deed, many a time he shooed her away from the spot. But he couldn’t beat her out of the house for the simple reason that there were many rats.

“The nestlings—three of them—had grown fat as the parents had been feeding them quite well. In this at least they were not idlers. Whimpering to eat more and more, they now hit against the grassy protection around the opening. It finally gave away and the two of them dropped like little meaty dumplings in the form of reward for the cat’s patience. Before the farmer boy could run to their help, she, more agile, gathered up the freebies and ran towards the courtyard wall. She wouldn’t let go off the prize even as a stick landed on its back while it cleared the fence. Now, you might say that he must have forsaken the criminal. To be fair to him, he must have even thought about doing the same, for I saw him chasing the offender for a couple of days. He must have started to become oblivious to the fact that there are rats if not for his mother’s scolding. Even the rats came out of their holes. Since there were rats, so there had to be a cat. They are still hidden around. Beware of them! Rats are even bigger enemies because they cause the cat to exist in the house.

“Well, to leave the cat and return to the tragedy-stricken parents, we can’t add wordings to their grief. The grassy facade had fallen. It now appeared a gaping hole of death in the far corner of which cowered the lone survivor. I saw it in the maker’s eyes as he pitifully looked at the nest from below. We don’t speak but our tweets make us understand our own chirping—it helps in telling you the story. But for the unspoken feelings of the humans! They are strange, so I cannot tell you anything about them. But I found him full of guilt for his design. His eyes conveyed that feeling to me. O yes, humans’ eyes tell a lot about the things that aren’t spoken. ‘I should have put up a support along the opening,’ I guessed him to rue sullenly. But somebody’s good intentions can’t match the perfection of design required to bring the full fructification of those kind wishes...”

Here again I’m just repeating the words, for the meaning gets lost to me. I must reproduce the crammed words. I feel more confident of my memory than of my wings. Anyway to carry on with my mother’s story:

“So as a result of the bird couple’s mismanagement, the boy’s deficiency of design and the cat’s simple validation of the fact that ‘cats not only eat rats, they eat birds with even more relish’ he blamed himself.

“After mourning the loss of two hatchlings, they had to still work for the sole survivor. As we birds forget easily, the task at hand becomes the real cause for flying, chirping, tweeting, pecking, peeking, etc., etc. They showered all paternal and maternal love upon the lone hatchling. The farmer boy knew that the last one was also doomed to fall, so he tried as many times to forget that there are rats and kicked the cat, followed by more and more lingering moments below the nest to catch the victim mid air.

“He is a very learned fellow, knows that a nestling—as soon as it gets onto its feet—tries to follow the parents after they have emptied their beaks into its greedy pout. So the moment he heard the little one’s shriek of joy announcing the parent bird’s arrival, he rushed to the scene to avoid repetition of the gory incident of the past.

“The young bird flapped its yellowish wings, pecked with its yellow-cornered beak at the saggy, scattered tufts of feathering. Many a time, it came almost toppling down as it continued on its repetitive haggling for food as the parents left the nest. Finally, one day its childish greed found it toppling down. However thanks to its good stars, there was no cat but the boy who had forgotten or trying to forget that there are rats. He plays the game of ball really well. I’ve seen him catching the ball over there in the playground where we get the grains and grass seeds outside the village. He caught the terrified thing midair. The screechy little drop almost choked itself to death with fear.

“Its unthankful parents, quite ignorant of the home-maker’s latest deed of kindness, tweeted obscenities from the branches of the neem tree swaying to gentle breeze in the courtyard. He knew that any effort to play the role of father-mother by him would still fall way short of the mark to save the little nestling—so repressing the urge to keep it—he flew it or rather threw up towards the hanging branches. It flapped its feathery resistance against a fall, thus fell less painfully, but cried as if had been shot. Anger and blame game touched a new high from the parents.

“However, a tree is a tree because it gives air, shadow and shelter to anyone looking for these. The fact that it was a tree was proved by another fact that there was another bird in it. It was but a crow! On the second throw, the wily crow plucked away the offering mid air and flew away with a thanksgiving cawing. In desperation the boy hit himself on the head and stoically bore all humiliations heaped by the stolen kid’s parents screeching, squeaking in pain.

“As penance, he boarded up half of the opening for a better future and clearer conscience. He came to our nest as well with the same suspicion about safety and the same set of resolution. However, both we parents chirped very confidently from our grassy fortress. He had to convince himself that at least we won’t add to his score of self-reproach. You were only eggs then dears; and he left us as we were!” 

Then we were hatched and grew at the cost of their parental labour. Then one day, I witnessed that genocide of egg-breaking by the rogue couple who sneaked into the other nest to set up their home by force. If not for that foul-smelling oddity, the life seemed birdie-small and infinitely enjoyable.

Mama and Papa were feverishly bent upon bringing each and everything available there in the outer world. The things and stuff cut by their beaks were easily lost in my gut. We thus grew bigger. I myself had a vague notion of this fact of growing stronger because now we made louder noise and ate more. But more was the look of desperation on the faces of Mama and Papa.

We thought we did them a favour by nibbling down everything they brought. So in order to make them happy in their occupation, we continued making noises even while our little bellies were full. Getting irritated, Papa sometimes gave us punishing pecks and chiding preens. He always talked of future...when you will grow up...when you will catch a worm yourself...when you’ll fly. And we siblings wondered why he talked so much about something we didn’t even know about.

Papa would have been really happy to see a day when his inexplicable and unmeaningful words dawned on us with their clear meaning. But then something happened and he was no longer able to repeat those words during the resting spells amidst his food-carrying duty. He had a scruffy look and spoke matter-of-factly in a serious tone.

But then one day he bore an extra serious expression, his beak open with a wearied thirsty look. His deep, kind eyes glazed to a frigid point somewhere far into the distances. Something had changed forever. It also meant that he no longer had to labour to and fro for the beakfuls of cargo to feed us.

The stoppages and pluggings born of the change meant that Mama now had to work doubly hard and mould her soft molly-coddling words to take the shape of his guiding phrases. ‘The balance’ she said. The toy which produces air out of air had mothered all these new meanings of a changed reality.

We birds have this faculty of minding only the business we are engaged in. However, it is a handicap as well. Handicap—faculty...faculty—handicap...advantages—disadvantages...profit—loss...loss—profit...paradoxically, these seem to have a peculiarly perverted, juxtaposed, interposed meaning to me. I can just draw a hazy meaning of what I just ended up telling you. Haa, haa but that makes me a bird philosopher.

From the grassy parapet we had a nice view of the swirling circle. We enjoyed its circular antics. It was so funny. Mama and Papa but warned each other while going out, looking at it apprehensively. However, coming in with a full beak is a totally different ball game. At that time possibly their mind doesn’t mind too much about the funny thing. And darting in with proud air, Papa was hit by the air- producing toy. His skull smattered; beak offloaded for the last time. Air catapulted him against the wall and then he slumped without air in his wings down the wall. For a few moments the air still seemed wobbling inside him at the foot of the wall, as if to play with the air from the airy toy.

He seemed all the same except airless, flightless and a tiny patch of blood on the skull tufts and loss of few feathers. I wondered why Mama was making such a huge roar over such a minor difference in Papa’s status. Then I grew anxious. Perhaps the difference was bigger than I had initially presumed because he didn’t move. I got worried that the cat will arrive, but perhaps all rats had gone out of the house that day, so the cat luckily didn’t reach the spot. It must have gone where all the rats had gone, perhaps on some vacation.

I learnt a new thing that day: if a cat isn’t around then it gives enough time for the snaily ants to creep up in swarms up to the one who is at risk at the hands of a cat. And I wondered and tried to calculate their number; whether they will be able to carry him or not. Before a cat he seemed so small, but before these ants he looked huge. However, someone still bigger came to lift him.

Seeing my Papa on his palm, I wondered whether this change of status had brought a new friendship between the boy and him. It taught me a lesson that if you are a bird but don’t fly due to change of status, you then become friend to a boy. Mama was in crying fits and we too imitated her; grew hungry in the process and opened our pleading beaks to her. Forgetting all her drift of mood due to Papa’s change of status, she started with larger beakfuls more frequently.

During resting intervals, she sat in the nest and looked sadly at the changed status of the airy toy; which perhaps had been punished for blowing out airs from Papa’s lungs. The boy also looked accusatively at it. However, there were mosquitoes and flies below and there was a buffalo as well who was being tormented by them. The insects, in dangerous droves, loved its blood. When the insects injected out the blood, it reacted furiously and that affected the milking process. So it was necessary to run the airy toy at least during the milking time for the black beauty, who had put so much of airs herself just because she gave milk to them to become fatter.

The next evening, when the barn was buzzing with so much of air, Mama shrieked painfully and got her status changed exactly like that of father, except the presence of the milking boy on the scene. He ran and stopped the airing toy and picked up Mama with even sadder face.

The air slowly went out of the toy. Mama also appeared to have lost her air. The toy and Mama went airless, but the buffalo had again too much airs about it. It kicked the bucket as a drone-fly penetrated its skin. In place of the cat and the ants, it was milk all over. I also came to know that if milk is not in the basket, but on the ground, then a beating follows, for the boy’s mother beat him away from the place. He had my Mama in his hand. I couldn’t see further where did they go, but I could hear his mother’s shouting.

Me and my sister were thus left alone. And how wonderful being left alone is! One can either choose to cry his guts out or chirp to the happiest hilt. However, we had our bellies empty so we chose the first option. Our new neighbours in the other nest suspiciously looked, lest our constant noise portended something accusatory against their transgression.

The grown-up brown-white bully, with a patch of black fur on its throat, even pecked at the grass protection about our nest’s opening to silence us. I remember Ma telling me that it was a male who looked like that and I instantly matched it with Pa.

We cried louder with wider beaks, thinking the good neighbour had come to feed us. But they had already split the future’s shapes in present’s semi-fluid, so expecting any help from them would have been asking too much. Still a kid sparrow doesn’t know the nitty-gritty of others’ and their own parents, so we cried to get some food, taking their reprimands for some caring, kind signals. Since I was bigger than my sis sparrow and ate more than her, I made more noise.

Our noise got the farmer boy’s attention. Since he was aware of the status of Mama and Papa, he must have derived our status as well from their status. I with my funny pale brown head gloated at him as the saviour. Though he had all the looks in his eyes of Mama and Papa, he couldn’t become Mama and Papa, because he had no wings to fly to the far place they visited and no beak to carry the food. So I forgave him on that account.

‘You have a big noisy head. Necessity will force you to come out of the nest and become a sparrow from an orphan nestling!’ he must have calculated in his big head, after all they seem to run this world with their big head buzzing with God knows what type of ideas.

I knew he had in all his kindness thought of saving us by playing a hardy role. But we were just nestlings. And he won’t be able to grow wings and beak to become Mama and Papa two-in-one. So it was hopeless from the beginning. He thus left us to face our lonely orphaned night.

If I could break these shells—I looked at the egg-shell fragments lying crushed around the grassy interior—while I was the tiniest of a thing to come out, I can still do the same. I tried to brace myself up quite funnily.

All the day’s bulbs dangling unseen outside were put out by turns and darkness crept up in the barn below. Though the boy lit up a feeble reddish thing on the wall opposite, perhaps to remove darkness from our scared minds and nest, in addition to the daily purpose of helping the buffalo see what was what and save her from conjecturing phantoms. But this was the darkest night we had ever faced. Nothing can be darker than being parentless. We both kept crying late into the night and when sleep could no longer wait for the stoppage of our sad songs, it somehow smothered us down.

When our eyes opened, the light bulb in the barn had been turned off and the bigger one somewhere outside had been turned on. Right from the word go, we started our day with a spell of fearful and heart-rending chirping in all its suffering connotations. Somebody must have said it pretty well that we must not cry out our sorrows too loudly, for in that case these tend to perpetuate themselves.

A sparrow sat to our side of the iron cross-beam and looked attentively, hopefully into the nest. I thought it was Mama who on account of her changed status now looked a bit different. But these little shards of hope were dispelled when she suddenly darted into the opening. Shorn of all our past sorrows, we gave a shrill cry of triumph, gave her a happy look for her new smarter, sleeker appearance—for Mama had pretty worn-out herself before her last status—and parted our beaks a bit accusatively and complainingly.

However, instead of love-cuddling pecks, she gave a painful bite at the soft yellow point of my beak. Still hopeful, I thought maybe she is reprimanding me for some silly mistake I might have committed during her absence. But a harsher peck at little sis’s softer and almost tuftless purple body convinced me that either it wasn’t Mama or if it was she indeed, then in this new avatar as the beholder of a new status she didn’t need us or at least won’t feed and love us.

She was later joined by another one. It was a young, strong male. I couldn’t help appreciating this new look of Papa. However, he was even harsher in his mistreatment. Maybe, he was angry that we hadn’t changed like them. But then I became sure they were not Mama and Papa, but some nest-grabbers like I had seen in my neighbourhood.

As the stronger elder sibling, I tried to protect the property, lest Mama and Papa returned to scold me for not protecting the home and hearth properly in their absence. Little sis cowered in a corner, while I fought them peck for peck. But I was just a kid sparrow who hadn’t taken a single flight, hadn’t taken a single beakful of his own. So inevitably I was finally dislodged from my precarious perch on the grassy rampart.

I knew there are rats, so making the presence of a cat quite logical. The floor below seemed an open jaw of a cat. So I flapped my wings with all my hungry belly’s might. I just beat them like I had been flapping inside the nest purposelessly. But then there was ground beneath my little paws and now I needed to avoid getting grounded. So naturally my feeble, famished flapping was bound to follow. To my surprise, it came naturally. A sparrow is destined to fly some day, I think. But then flying isn’t the only thing in life.

Life stuck up in my chirpy throat, I just flapped dizzily without knowing the path or direction. Much to my first shriek of joy for the last many-many hours—now it had started to appear like I hadn’t chirped happily even once since that doomed rupture in the shell brought me into this world of sorrows—I found myself landing on the wings of the air-maker which fortunately wasn’t making air at that time. Perhaps it had stopped to witness my first flight—otherwise my status too would have changed like that of my parents.

Now I cried for my little sis to come out. They were having a good time pecking at her soft,  scantily furred body. I myself was disappointed at my own appearance in the new light. I appeared quite funny. A muddy greyish cast. My relatively better furred body carried the striking vulgarity of a yet-to-take-flight nestling. But then I remembered I had taken my first flight and that too quite successfully. So I convinced myself that in the department of looks also I will perform better after my consequent flights.

They then threw out my little sis also. From the first moment, I cried words of encouragement. But she was too small, soft and feeble. Her first flight was surely going to be a failure. She wasn’t that mature to know that she had wings with a purpose to fly.

However, knowing the wings and putting desperate efforts to use them doesn’t mean a successful first flight, which in majority of the cases robs further chances of a retry. Why? Because there are rats and that means there are cats also. She struggled harder than I could have ever expected. Just a few more morsels daily for the last week and she definitely would have made it with her will power!

Now I held myself guilty for eating her share and thus robbing her of that extra ounce of power which would have ensured success in the first flight itself. That is, in reaching a destination, safe from the cat, even if it means to land on this airy toy that takes air out of sparrows to give air to the buffalo.

Alas, she fell! Not vertically straight, which would have been an utter humiliation. She flew slantingly, plummeting down dangerously, out of the barn’s all-open front except for the two supporting columns across the length. She almost hit the middle of the neem trunk in the courtyard.

“Clutch at the bark...clutch at the bark...dig your little claws into it!” I cried at the top of my voice.

However, it required a few more ounces of strength. But her long flight, longer than mine and I felt beaten on this account even though she ate lesser, had sapped her of the tiny reservoir of power. She just slumped along the rough, dark-brown surface of the main trunk. There she sat on the ground by the trunk; her beak panting like the world outside was airless.

Some rat must have played truant in some corner of the house for it created ripples in the cat’s catty self and she ran towards the scene. Screeching a warning, I threw myself out from my perch. But instead of landing on the cat’s cursed head, I found myself clinging from the upper part of the trunk, where it branched off into many other parts to allow we birds some shelter and airy swings.

She proved that she was a true, unerring and unsparing cat. Much to my consternation even the farmer boy wasn’t there to punish the culprit with a hit at its bum while it leapt over the fence. Enjoying the regal spectacle of the cat hunting a prey, my neighbours were chirping meticulously from the branches above. I don’t know whether they were throwing obscenities or were just playfully chirping.

My initiation into the outer world was thus quite an ordeal. I knew this new world required one more effort to reach higher in the foliage and from there watch out for the new prospects that might exist for a tiny sparrow like me. So drawing out the last ounces of strength from my hungry belly and bracing up my aching wings, I put up my third effort.

This time but I almost failed. I came hurtling and crashing down the branches to anchor my little paws into some support. I had almost given up but then luckily found myself clinging from a low hanging branch. After panting and resting for long minutes, I decided to give another try. This time I was satisfied as I found myself perched on a bough in the middle of the canopy. And from my dear place, away from the cat’s reach, I gathered my wits to collect some thoughts about this new world.

‘So this is the new world Mama and Papa ferried food from!’ I thought about their trials and tribulations.

The tree wasn’t as big as I had supposed it to be. It didn’t look as interesting and mysterious as I had imagined it. The neem just appeared a bigger nest on a larger scale. There were high-low zigzagging walls of the houses, where there were more people like our own farmer boy. Maybe, there were rats and many more cats also. And there was this dull-bluish ceiling—like our very own roof—seemingly very high overhead. I suppose it wasn’t as high as it seemed, for it appeared to be supported by the upper edges of the walls at the farthest corner this bigger nest.

I mustered up my wings, thinking that maybe I’ll be able to take flights long enough to take a peek around this larger—though not as big as I had thought earlier—nest to find Mama and Papa in their changed status. But the earlier efforts had been too daunting and tiresome. So I completely abandoned the idea and put all my faith in my vocal cords. Quite surprisingly, even with my hungry belly, I could cry quite noisily. This I banked upon to carry my chirping message to my parents. Sitting there in the branches of the neem tree I cried:

“Mama and Papa, do you hear? I have successfully taken my first flight as you wished me to. But the bad thing is that the little sis failed. Weak and small as she was. Her failure meant that the cat took flight with her!”

I was loudly chirping all that had happened in the course of the time since their change of status.

I was fully confident that this newer bigger world wasn’t big enough to stop my voice from reaching their ears. But it didn’t change my status or position in any way. Quite unlike the bulb on the barn wall, this bigger bluish roof had its bigger, far brighter bulb. Quite surprisingly, it changed its position since the time I had started to cry my guts out. Still more interestingly, the shades of its light also changed colours.

My constant screaming did invite some attention. The way they were cawing they must be crows, I thought. I recalled a story Mama had told me one day about them. I immediately knew it didn’t portend well, for like cats they too are enemies with the added faculty of flying. A sparrow has to outmanoeuvre them in variously agile flying pattern. However, my options were so few that I decided to wait and watch.

The crows then started quarrelling for me, as if none of them had a son of theirs and they wanted to adopt me. The black monsters made it a virtual battlefield on the tree. Now I realised that there still was a bigger world beyond what I saw, for the farmer boy surely must not have been there because he didn’t rush to the noisy scene in his courtyard. Had he been somewhere in the bigger nest, he was sure to come out to inquire. And that would have helped me.

‘Maybe he is chasing the cat—completely forgetting that there are rats—with little sis in its mouth!’ I thought.

‘Am I so dear to these darkies that they are fighting it out among themselves to lay claim on me?’ now I got some little traces of pride.

Then a bigger claimant with a larger instinct to patronise me hovered above the tree. In contrast to the blacks, its colour was brown-greyish. Its size was also bigger than the crows. But those murderously searing, searching eyes looked at me with such force that I felt attracted, exalted and scared at the same time. 

One more thing, it also made me sure that it wasn’t just a rogue, outcaste crow painted differently as a punishment and given bloodied eyes also due to beatings. It had razor-sharp, pointed, hooked beak. The closer it hovered, more differences struck me and my fear plummeted high into the blue roof. It had deadly claws which far out-sharpened the crows. Now I realised that its claim on me was the strongest. What made the claim strongest? There was no likewise rival to blunt the sharp edges of its hooked beak and talons. I knew it had all the power to mould my status the way it wanted. I felt a strong surge of nostalgia about my parents’ memories.

“If he takes me then my status as my Mama’s and Papa’s kid will be changed!” I cried attention to all the cawing and fighting darkies.

My warning little tweets, but, went in vain. They, after all, were so busy in fighting it out among themselves. Their love for me was forcing them to give each other bloodied noses. And then, before I could vent out my next warning, those strong talons just snatched me away. It happened so swiftly that my little eyes couldn’t even smack their lids.

As he rose higher, with me squeezed in his talons, I cried fools at the blacks. My sound must have been stronger this time, for they got the message and followed us almost crying with tears in their eyes. They made all types of threatening cawing, flew swiftly with menacing agility. Even the great fiery bulb—it had changed its position, I got to know while squeezed in those claws—seemed cheering the new claimant’s ownership of me.

One of the sharp talons was curled around my neck restricting my verbosity; others were dug feebly but still tightly in my feathering, giving sharp pain. However, that thrill of bigger, longer flight was giving me such pleasure that I forgot even the pain. The passing cool air, cooler than I had ever felt it, sang in my ears. Clutched topsy-turvy, I had a madly exciting view of the fleeting panorama of this still bigger nest spread far and wide.

There was also that exalted feeling about beating the blacks with the help of this mighty bird. They were left behind and retreated to their smaller world. While travelling trapped in those claws, I imagined all types of fanciful things about the world he was taking me into. Although this world we were flying through seemed limited always up to that line of tree-tops with the blue roof supported on top of the branches. But surprisingly, we were never able to reach the end, so I just waited patiently to come to the front of a newer world.

But all my hopes were dashed as—even before crossing the threshold of this bigger (but not that big) world which seemed just a few paces away by that line of trees across the fields—he stopped in this very world. I was disappointed about the landing place as well. It was a huge strange tree. A dry, leafless tree of this new world, as if my carrier-friend had eaten away all the foliage. At its top was a thick nest of prickly twigs, rags and wood pieces. And mind you, it was stinking like hell. Into this he dumped me. I fell on a dried piece of meat and a little bone which hurt me.

Aawo...now I realised that the big bird needed a playmate for his lonesome, brooding nestling put up so high at this solitary place on this charmless tree. Instantly my new friend, almost as big as a crow but looking so funny in his shabby feathering, came to play with me. I also reciprocated his friendly welcoming leap of joy at me. However, his pecking was severe in comparison to my own caressing and harmless one. I but forgave him just on account of his inability to play softer, given his bigger size and sharp talons making it difficult for him to keep the welcome hug down to my sparrow level.

He was really eager to play with me. His father—or was it mother, I doubted while playing—looked with parental glint of satisfaction from a nearby dead branch. Then I began to bleed at various points of my first coat of feathering. Still I tried to play, though with time, it became a struggle to defend myself from further cuts and bruises. My playmate was too big and almost toyed with me. I kept on complaining noisily. But he was all eager to play and didn’t listen to me at all.

Here we have to stop our narrative for I’m on the verge of fainting due to this bloody game of his...aye...aye...I am perhaps losing in the game!

A Small World Around Her Feet

 Her beautiful bluish eyes were sparking with reflections from swift torrents of the Ganges. Standing by the support posts of Ram Jhoola, the huge suspension bridge in Rishikesh, she took a deep view of the spiritual panorama like she had so many times since her arrival, believing the place to provide her spiritual succour, a food for her ruffled soul.

On the steps below an old Sadhu was washing brass image of Nag Deva in the sediment laden waters of the Ganges spiritually ebullient in the rainy season. She marvelled at the way his frail fingers, charged with devotional fervour for his beloved god, were busy in creating a shinier visage for the Godly metal. He seemed to be lost in a musical prayer; the rhythmic ripples in the holy mother chanting songs for him. His frail body, long locks of hair and beard all busy in devotional unison. Swiftly flew Ganga Maiya with the crop of its erosion work in the Himalayas.

With the enthusiasm of a spiritually spellbound foreigner she took a snap and the flash of light seemed to have disturbed his prayer. He stood erect holding the rag with the help of which he was using the abrasive power of the sediments to make his faith shinier and newer. The talisman of his faith was shining in the sun. The flashlight’s noisy whisper distracted his devotional work. In the distance a conch shell blared with devout urgency. He looked at her and a faint smile surfaced on his lips lost in rag tag beard. It then changed to laughter. The bearded laughter was a peculiar one and made her uneasy. People’s voice, music in the temples, dull vehicle sounds, incense and spiritual fervour sashaying over the breeze riding Ganges torrents all appeared to have stopped for a moment. She was clad in an Indian way, kameez and salwar, and looked resplendent with her curves and angelic features. For a fraction of a second he stood like a hypnotised soul.

Uneasily she moved onto the great bridge devotionally named Ram Jhoola. Vidhut followed her like a quadruped and taking a pity on the invalid she stopped. A local guide had translated the invalid’s story for 50 rupees. The invalid beggar was born with limbs that just allowed him to crawl on the four. He was born at ‘Pili Bheet’ she tried to recall the name but missed. He was 20 years of age now and had left home a good seven years back to sustain himself on all fours, while the more important bipeds scampered over him across the narrow swinging bridge that swayed over the majestic sprawl of the Ganges below. He spent his nights in the verandas of dharamshalas, making it a point to stick around as long as possible till he was kicked out along with the dogs. When his luck struck best, he even landed with 100 rupees at the end of the day. After hearing his translated story, she had given a nice blue 100 rupee bill as she took a snap, and he had taken it as the modelling fee. After all he was special. As she walked up to him he expected another modelling assignment. But she passed with the best smile ever possible that took him off all his fours.

The devotional world on both sides of the Ganges carried on among the bathing steps, temples, rest houses, dharamshalas, ashrams and bazaars buzzing with religious items.

For a whole month the rain Gods had been dripping in their pleasant fury. Even though it was not cold, still after so much of water and dampness it is desirable to have sunrays.

“For the last one month so much water has fallen over us that I feel like a fish permanently relishing the sea!” a saffron clad babaji, flaunting his English commented as he looked sideways while crossing her on the bridge.

She was tempted to look back but knew the risks a beautiful white woman carried in this part of the world, and quite contrary to her open nature she did not turn back. Such looks, simply born of curiosity, are misinterpreted very easily as green signal for a fling. She thus avoided the trouble.

The incense-drenched world on both sides of the great river appeared slowed down and subdued by the rains. Deep foggy clouds did endless rounds amidst the surrounding little vales and very easily found pretence to unburden themselves of whatever water they carried. From the surrounding ridges, water was perpetually slipping down to copiously feed even the tiniest sub-tributaries of small rivulets further feeding moderately big rainy drainage and the latter finding their way to the big river.

She needed this type of small place solace, far away from New York where the big world had piled up enough restlessness in her to go footloose. A chain smoker she had not smoked even once since she arrived here a week back. It was nothing sort of a miracle and she was looking forward to add many more such soothing miracles.

She loved this seemingly ancient world and more so in this antique shop. It was fragrant with anciently aesthetic fragrance. There were old paintings, saucers, sculptures, brass tortoise, frogs flat on their bellies, dogs, puppies, candle stand, carved silver vessels, a huge cone (God knows for what purpose), lizards, scales, compasses, trays, tumblers, beautiful vases, lamps, chimers, the oldest gramophone she had ever seen, horse riders, Gods and Goddesses, soldiers, crockery, Victorian trinkets, copper bronze and silver coins, a big painting by a Britisher, a Harappa type of violinist sitting on a chair, lamps of various shades, a marble mermaid, horse bust, electroplated punch bowls, an old rusted gypsy pan, old time watches, and so forth. She tried to observe each and everything. It was a pleasant mess. It was more exotic than her city-cramped senses could afford to see, forget about buying. She started taking pictures.

The attendant chided in her broken English, “If all take photos who buy!?”

She was embarrassed and to avoid further embarrassment bought an old replica of a boat. She also wanted to buy the British period copper bugle but found it too big and abandoned the idea.   

As she came out she met the gaze of that very same Sadhu whom she had seen washing the bronze God in the sandy waters of the river. His face bore a strange look. She got the pin-prick of scare and lowered her eyes to sneak past into the jostling crowd in the narrow bazaar street. She was apprehensive. She knew the risks the foreigners faced in India. But possibly it was incidental and probably the woman in her was exaggerating the risk. She had many muddled thoughts in her mind as she again found herself lost and spread out in the unknown world of agonies and ecstasies.

****

Sitting by a small roadside tea stall the old man in ascetic robes—but real earthly self of worldly needs clearly visible through the charity-expectant look—was asking for a packet of biscuits. With a fistful of coins he had purchased himself tea and retrieved a bit of honour, but to carry his will further, i.e., tea and biscuit both, he still needed the favourite aid of asceticism, i.e., asking for alms.

“Can’t see, lost my specks, now who would take mercy on an old man like me?” he pleaded.

Oh thou holy place! So many disbanded, discarded, and obsolete human beings take shelter in your teeming streets laden with religious fervour. Incense, chanting, charities, soul-salvaging rituals, flying locks, saffron robes—it’s a world in itself catering to the needs of as many as they dump their poor selves here. In between mother Ganges washed away littler, muck, and sins without any complaints.

Somebody bought him a biscuit packet and the religioner opened his worldly identity. “I’m from Pushkar in Rajasthan.”

He was on a month’s tour to the orphanage here. However, arriving here he might have calculated his chances better at this place than home because it literally won’t even raise any issue in his family if he didn’t return at all.

“Let me see if there is a man of God who can get me specks!?” he quaked in pleading fervour, trying to pull the strings of devotee’s salvage-seeking spirits.

“You are asking too much maharaj! It’ll cost about 100 bucks, so you should ask in instalments, collect your money and then buy to see this beautiful world!” a fat gentleman mused.

“There is a place but from where you can get one in charity,” another person wrote hastily an address on a chit of paper and the old sanyasi proffered a blessing over his head. 

This world is a little merry-go-round thing. The very same person who had taken the pains to write the address of a charitable organisation found the old man trying to invoke kindness in devotion-smitten souls walking over Ram Jhoola. “O men and women of God, can’t you spare something for my stomach treatment. It pains...day in and out. They say an operation is required. Please-please I die daily of this pain. God will bless you with pleasures unimaginable if you help me relieve from this pain!” the sonorous notes of his pleading voice mixed into the cool breeze blowing over the waters of the kind, cleansing river.

The address giver moved towards him with a meaningful smile. The charity seeker but was unmoved and stood solid with his present version of need. “It’s not that I just survive for free. I work as well. I wash brass utensils of that big temple over their!” before the gentleman could start with some lesson in morality and ethics of charity, the old man put up his defence guard.

“You had told me that you’ll directly go to the charity shop, get your specks and leave for your home!” the gentleman seemed up for some jest with the old man.

“Yes I’m gathering fare to reach the spot you mentioned. And to get money here you have to have a good reason, so this stomach ailment,” the old beggar was trying to salvage some respect.

The gentleman gave him 20 rupees and asked him to take a shared auto to reach the place before it closed for the day. Possibly he wanted to accomplish one pious deed in the day at any cost! He literally shoved him to the auto stand and deliberately hid himself around some corner to see the old man’s chain of action.

The old sanyasi was suddenly spellbound and looked at her feminine majesty as she passed at a distance unmindful of the gaze that was anchored on her with particular interest. The hiding gentleman could not hold it anymore and came angrily chiding, “Tricky old man, befooling people with need of specks and here you have all eyes for that beautiful white woman!”

****

Vidhut, the invalid from birth, had a sort of office on the Ram Jhoola, crawling on all fours, wearing chappals in his hands and another pair tied on both knees of his malformed little stumps of legs. As the devotees came gazing into the majestic torrents of the holy river, he pulled at the strings of their conscience, coming as a means of their salvage, a means of drawing God’s blessings by being kind to him. Crawling like this in the spiritual path of the pilgrims he daily earned 80 to 100 rupees. These days he visited his family very rarely.

Pili Bheet in Uttar Pradesh was a totally different place and his parents almost satisfied with God’s verdict to have him at the holy site as an instrument of Godly blessings for the luckier chunk of humanity. Yesterday he had a strong sense of purpose in life and rented a room for rupees 400 a month. He felt like respecting himself more, and draw more respect from the dharamshala caretaker who had kicked him out the previous day.

Once again her angelic face was gathering all these interesting tit-bits from him through another paid translator, a local street urchin who had picked up smatterings of English to get some pocket money in the bargain. The Ganges was creating stormy ripples below the mighty suspension bridge drawn from corporeal to the incorporeal. A man with puckered face watched with jealousy and interest.

“I have helped him many times, saved him from the policeman who try to drag him off the bridge. They in turn hit me with batons. I still carry the mark!” desperately he tugged at the local interpreter’s shirt to translate it for the Madam and get some attention on him for being good to somebody whom she liked to talked to.

“It’s a fracture. You must have got it while stealing something,” the translating boy just snubbed him in rough Hindi and shoved him away.

Surely, Vidhut was in news among the beggar group on the Jhoola.

“These white people are so strange that she might even adopt you and take you as far as America, the heaven!” one of his fellow beggars was creating the celestial world of luck beyond imagination.

And of course Vidhut hated the particularly interested stare of the old beggar from Rajasthan whenever she passed along. Had he approached her like any other beggar then it would have been normal. But the old Rajasthani was particularly drawn to her persona and still did not go for what is expected, i.e., alms or charity, but simply looked from a distance. It convinced him that the old man was drawn to her in a hateful way. And he cursed him for that. 

****

If you are a foreigner and happen to be at some pilgrimage place, you are then supposed to enjoy the devotional and spiritual fervour of the place, however tedious the exercise might come to you. The experience is, however, recommended.

After the Satsang organised by Swami Ramsukhdev ji Maharaj, in which innumerable chants and hymns and preaching interventions passed over her bent head, she was wearing her shoes crouching on the ground. A truly, we mean really religious persona decked in religiosity for the visual delight of it, priestly hand moved and was placed on her head with all the showers of this and the other world. She was awestruck looking up at his religious make up. It was amazing and impressive from all corners of this world.

“Are you from England?”

“No Maharaj I’m from America,” she had learnt to address the people attired as such with this word.

“Need a place to stay? You can stay here at the ashram. A very nice room!” he pinched slightly at her arm, straightway driving a strange intimacy.

She got to the immediate fringe of some vaguely lurking danger. The Ashrams vied with each other in having more and more white skins staying there for more impression and more gains in more than one form. It was a big industry to cater to money and carnal desires. She was shocked beyond apprehension and found herself going along with him. Now he was becoming more and more direct.

“This Godman is a ruffian...bastard...Has fun with girls staying at the ashram,” again he pinched at her arm mischievously, his voice now shaking with some fearful, natural passion.

She was scared beyond all her limits, even scared to scream loudly, after all these people are revered even more than God. She had seen hundreds falling at their feet since her arrival.

“You know we as humans should love each other. Oh, you don’t know how much I have liked you since I saw you. I’m blessed to have your company,” he was becoming more direct taking her shell-shocked state to be her consent. Or had she been drawn into some trick of hypnotism?

By now she could feel the pangs of lust effulging from his holy robes. But she was scared even to say something, forget about shouting. Vidhut just lunged forward in his dusted world, straying around like a puppy among the stampede of the bigger world above.

“Maharaj, maharaj...this life is wretched...I won’t let you go of your holy feet, bless me...I’m a worm and die every minute, please, oh please...” he was squirming like in fits and howling so piteously that even dozens stood around to have a look.

She regained her senses and just took the fraction of a moment to sneak out of the place, but not before looking into those dull dark eyes of the invalid, knowing fully well that he had done it deliberately to help her sneak out of the difficulty.

****

As per the norms of the society set up according to the appearances, we have to call him a lunatic. Her attention was drawn by the oddity of his forlorn situation. He was sitting on a heap of stones and a rimmed paramilitary hat perched safely on a towel wrapped around his ‘lost somewhere’ brain. To add more to his otherworldly attractiveness, he had wrapped a polythene sheet around him as if to guard his identity about which the bigger world wasn’t concerned anymore. Much to her surprise he somewhat positively responded to her accost. Saggy beard around the jaw-line moved to faint vestiges of smile on his face which appeared that of a Sikh. The smile seemed like an iota of appreciation for the swathes of sympathy on her beautiful features. He was eating soybean seeds from a packet. Sandals picket out from somewhere; a little school-boy’s tie; a sweater; a bag full of empty bottles and packets—it was all that remained to him in this world. In his pockets he had a torn diary and a pen.

“What is your name...name, name!” she treated him like a fellow human being, emphasising on ‘name’.

It was like talking to a stone, to something, to some empty bottle in the garbage pit stinking with all the muck in the world. We are sure he had not been called so particularly for long with such specific attention. He even got scared, getting into that evasive action to avoid a hit on the face. But then the beauty on her face was too assuring. His petrified eyes groped into the depths of her blue eyes. Sanity lurked deep from the unfathomable well of his miseries.

“M...M...Meer Singh!” his eyes closed under the impact of the push he gave to his crippled mind to draw sense for this beautiful creature from the outer world.

The way he had responded he seemed a case of somebody who had lost human sympathy rather than his mind.

She could recall Vibhut so particularly emphasising the place he was born to the translator. People carry the place of their birth even more importantly than even their names.

“Where are you from?” she was trying to make him understand the question more through gestures.

He kept on muttering some name again. Perhaps he was telling the name of the place. Since she was not aware of the local names any guesswork in that direction was of no use. He was trying to say the same word with a huge effort of his salivating mouth. Having failed to go any more, he gestured with his finger towards his head and finally like the dreamy world of an opium-fed man, he circled his finger over his hand to indicate he was mentally crippled. He had conveyed his identity.

“Education, education, studies, studies, books, school, school...” she held onto the iota of sanity that the anchorage of her sympathy had caught onto from across the unknown dark gloomy sea of his oblivion.

“Matric!” the effort found spittle dandling across the tufts of beard on his chin.

Again he circled his finger over the hat. Well, that was his identity now.

Possibly, drinking had something to do with his mental disorder for he picked up an empty cold drink bottle and muttered, “Bad, bad, hicc!!”

His eyes contorted with fear and he was looking now at something behind her back. Scared herself she looked back and was terrified beyond imagination. So it was not incidental. That smile by the riverside when he was washing that idol and that appearance by the trinkets shop, it wasn’t just simple coincidence. He but seemed even more scared than she herself was. Realising this, her fear turned more of a curiosity. The man stood there with folded hands. Before she could even react she saw Vidhut crawling up from behind and he straightway lunged into the old Sadhu’s legs, misbalancing him and toppling him on all fours. He was shouting like anything, raising a scare, drawing people’s attention, trying to save the princess from the danger that this old bad man, more beggary than anyone else in the semblance of saffron religiosity, presented. Vidhut was crying as he hit the man and clawed his face. The lunatic man also got up and unnerved by a strange sense started stomping the ground like an angry ape. He too started beating the old man with his hat. It was a real melee and before the people got together to disentangle the three of them, Vidhut had shown enough crawling clawing heroism to thoroughly roughen up the old man who was shaking and crying with convulsive sobs.

“All I wanted was a photo with her, hai hai send this rascal to jail, this crawling villain has shaken up my bones, police-police, is there any...is there a God-fearing man to take side of this old Sadhu who has been unjustifiably beaten up, hai hai, look at this worm who wriggles around the firangi woman!” he pointed to Vidhut.

She had already left the scene. People saw them going together. She was walking at a moderate pace and he crawling as fast as he could manage. Many tourists clicked a picture of this beautiful moment. There was mud across the narrow path. She put all her strength to lift his mud-smeared body, getting herself soiled in the effort, and put him to the other side. People applauded.

Somebody cheered, “She might have even fallen in love with him, these are crazy people, white people, expect the most daring from them!”

Broken Smile

 Monsoon was here to foster environmental harmony and rekindle human spirits. All the colours available on a painter’s palette were on display on the vast canvas of the sky. The spectacular skylark clouds approached as the harbingers of rain. The sky’s apron was dark grey when it was drizzling; it turned silvery grey when gentle showers turned to heavy downpour. Clouds low and high; clouds in different cottony sculpted swathes; in different sizes and shapes. In the mornings when the sun lurked around the horizon these reflected a golden sheen; in the forenoon when the sun was curtained by high veiling of clouds, the lower bluish-grey fabric reflected half the usual brightness. In the afternoon pale grey handed over the baton to most exciting interplay of cloudy colours in the evenings. The atmosphere washed of its linen during the day, now the setting sun virtually changed these vaporous hangings into a vast kaleidoscope of colours. Baleful of clouds and colours in the sky’s lap.

He liked this particular interplay of cloudy colours in monsoon skies: scarlet, purple, chocolate, orange, reddish orange, yellowish, and numerous other combinations. He often marvelled at the interplay. He mused about the unknown painter. Nature. He knew it was nature.

He stayed alone and even on nights did not miss the shades of dull white and black. In mid-September the monsoonal sojourn extended into autumnal sultriness of retirement like he felt about himself at this stage of life. And on this full-moon night, fluffy white lumps of milky clouds shone against the background of rain-washed bluish dark sky lit here and there by the brightest stars. The moon shone at the acme of its shape and brightness. He had companions in these beauties of the night. Staring into the distances of the night sky, he felt related to some destiny somewhere at the farthest end of the universe. Gauzy, lacy, transparent fabric of these clouds was drawn like a curtain; and when it passed over the moon, the full-faced beauty smiled through the veil like a shy bride at his excited bachelor self. A sort of lunar rainbow! A silvery hallo around the celestial beauty, fading into yellowish band, followed by a purple one. The night too had colours. He was happy while spending sleepless nights on his solitary terrace. On fluffy, broken cloud pieces, the moon threw yellowish and purplish dye as these fleeted forward driven by easterly monsoon winds. These and other such spectacles were his playmates for old age.

The much-pampered Chau Chun, as big as a leopard cat, fed on his affection and full-cream milk, was snoozing in his lap. It was afternoon. The sun must have been halfway across the perpendicular and the western horizon. A dark sheet of cloud hung horizontally, passing the sun just below its lower ring. Caressing the cat on its sleepy head, he heaved a sigh and looked at the spectacle and stopped for a moment in telling the story to the sleeping cat. A fountain of light burst down like a bright column of stage-light. The easterly breeze carried very low fluffy dark-grey clouds. Against the brighter upper background these appeared smoky puffs of a steam engine. As these passed the bright column of the sun’s flashlight their smokiness became prominent. The unmindful pampered cat did not mind interruption in the story. He was telling the stories of his life. The story of a leopard that came his way while he was walking in a mountain forest.

“You go your way and I take care of my path,” he confidently instructed the big cat, purporting to brag to the little cat and admonishing the little one not to mess with him.

During his heydays he had the guts to look straight into the eyes of a leopard without showing any signs of fear so that the big cat just moved away. He gave a loud burst of solid laughter as he concluded the story and started another about the bullying monkey whom he had reprimanded like a little child and the monkey had just retreated shamefaced.

He really liked his cat and believed in its ability to sense the paranormal. He was equally fond of its lazy sleepy ways. “If cats do not sleep for so long, their predatory instincts would chuck out at least some of the species!” he proudly explained sometimes to the neighbour. 

It was a musty autumnal twilight. A desultory breeze blew across the Doon Valley. Day’s white and night’s black mixed to produce standard grey of twilight. In the yawning despondency, the thickly wooded Himalayan foothills, tiny ridges, rilled vales—a teasing bonsai of the mighty Himalayas—stood in tired silence. A big, vertical column of cloud stood alone in the sky like a skyscraper. The sun had dived deep beyond the hillocks; and this cloudy tower seemed to stand on its toes to have a look at the day’s eye. The upper reaches of the cloudy column still reflected the faint ochre of the downed sun. It thus hovered over the tall strands like a big bulb. But then the sun dived still deeper below the horizon and the fluffy vapours handed over their last sheen to the folds of the autumnal night.

Chau Chun slipped out of his hand and he saw it crossing the compound wall and jumping into the forest’s welcoming greenery.

“Haa haa sala hunter! Can’t help it. Feed him the best malai in the world, he but still needs to go on nocturnal forays!” he laughed at the feline creature.

Many times the big cat just slipped out only to come at day-break next day with more love and more pampering at the master’s feet.

Situated in a broad bowly depression at the foot of mighty father’s Shivalik hills, the little nature’s cove had Mussorie facing in the north at the crest of high ranges like a proud queen. Crisscrossing the tiny villages and hamlets the road circuited along the scattered peace of the area. Jakhan, Johri, Sinaula cradled in the lap of this bowl basking in impregnable peace. Along the road there were little general stores, tailor shops, mostly run by womenfolk, surprisingly little doctoring shops of registered unregistered medical practitioners, and PCOs. The rural community as you moved into the forest away from the main Mussorie road looking cosily safe in self-sustaining mode, and what is more important living in peace. Clouds got a full chance to vent out their rainy ecstasy here upon the welcoming canopy of broad-leaved sal forests. One would feel blessed by the atmospherics when enclosed by the wispy, dense, foggy strands of stratus and nimbostratus clouds stuck up in a little spur and thereby losing their essence in melting, surrendering abundance.

This little heaven, starting from Rajpur road at Jakhan, didn’t give even the littlest clue to the veritable peace and tranquillity lying undisturbed a couple of kilometres into the forest and tiny hamlets. He was moving into this peace. Vehicle noise from the road to Mussorie died after him. He was headed to the forest. He walked with a limp. He had carried a scar on his left leg for the last 20 years, non-healing in nature and asking him to live another day with reinvented determination, take one more step at the cost of more pain. More than the pain in leg, his heart was aching. Chau Chun hadn’t returned.

Tiny tidied neat homes, bungalows of retired army officials, local faces showing mild mongoloid features, undisturbed flora and fauna, it was all spread around him with the sense of normalcy like you expect on any day. But Chau Chun was not to be found.

“O Sahab...O Sahab...for God’s sake don’t walk so much!” he was harked at from behind.

With a resigned sideway glance he looked at the follower and slowed down for the person to catch up with him.

The follower was a very strongly built stocky old man. Now he was a peculiar mass of muscles mired in ageing pulp. From looks and the way he wore his clothing anybody would have dubbed him a lunatic. However, it wasn’t really so. The concern that he showed for the limping man belied all such possibilities. He was carrying huge sacks in both hands. His right leg tied in a rag was badly lacerated. With stony nonchalance to his condition he was carrying on his march towards his destination to the next hamlet. He knew the sahib. On more than one occasion he had received some retired ware as a mark of the kind man’s large-heartedness.

The old man took a vow to find Chau Chun even if it meant looking every nook corner in the bushes of the forest around. The master but knew that nothing sort of a personal search will satisfy his aching heart.

He walked on calling Chau Chun, Chau Chun. He wanted the cat back at any cost. He just couldn’t afford to lose this axis of his fatherly affection. The sky will lose its colours if he didn’t find his pet, a family member rather. He searched and searched, and returned all tired with the fatigued rays of the sun at the day-end.  

It was raining at night and he couldn’t sleep. Unable to stop himself he set out in the dark to find the listener to his stories. It was windy and a gust, not showing any respect to the elderly, blew away his umbrella, leaving him open to the storm’s fury.

The next day found him sick and the wound still worse. In semi-consciousness he was telling the stories of his youth, when he had been healthy and was not alone because he participated in the mundane mad race. His muffled words. Nobody to hear. Not even Chau Chun.