The Notes of a Bucolic Romancer

 

We are definitely up for climatic upheavals. The Siberian forests are burning. Forest fires blaze for weeks in North America as well. These forest fires, within a span of few weeks, have unleashed as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as entire India does, from all sources, in a year. Mother Nature is continuously sounding the alarm signal but we have taken it for granted. So here we are busy in petty fights over business, weapons, nationalities, alliances, religion, caste, politics, race and ethnicities. Meanwhile, the degradation of our natural resources goes unchallenged.  

Many rulers have gone to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session. It’s a very nice outing at the most, especially after almost two years of incarceration when they took virtual diplomatic pot-shots from the confines of their offices and residences. My advice is please don’t get too excited. Take it as a nice holiday break only. This world is far better with ‘at-ease’ rulers. The moment they get agitated, it’s we the poor subjects who bear the consequences.

The ruling Talibs of Afghanistan are feeling let down because their representative can’t enjoy a trip to the big place. I think they have a big space to manoeuvre their way into the international body. It needs a very little step. Appoint a woman UN representative for Afghanistan. Then watch who has the guts to deny you entry into the UN. But probably they are even more scared of the free, independent, educated Muslim women than the idol-worshipping kafirs. 

China is just round the corner of again getting angry at the United States. ‘Why do they have the entire UN headquarter to themselves? We also have nice cities and ready to host the UN sessions,’ the irritated spokesman is just about to say any day. If they don’t say this, I would compliment them for their patience and understanding. 

You just cannot enjoy the show on other’s premises, nicely smirking over the fence. The spectacles spread like wild fire, especially if the spectacle-couriers are around. There are plenty in the village now, by the way. Have you ever seen a good monkey? The term doesn’t apply to their species. At least among the rhesus monkeys you can go to the earth’s end to find a well-behaved one. You will return empty handed. So the spectacles that I have been gleefully not only watching but writing about also creep to my premises.

There has been a very busy rainy season this year. Even the ever-thirsty farmers are folding hands under the clouds to spare the paddy that has been sloshed to the nostrils. ‘It will drown and die!’ they plead. Water is everywhere, it’s there in puddles in the streets, in the huge village pond, in the canals flowing around the village, in paddy fields, you just name it and there will be some water.

So who is still crazy for water? It’s the big alpha rhesus rascal. His pride and vanity has been propped so high, after producing many dozens of tiny rascals, that it now feels itself entitled to bathe and drink A-grade water. It’s a huge monkey with plenty of strength in its hands. The broken water tank lid on the roof is enough testimony to his strength. My neighbour witnessed the spectacle today just like I had witnessed his best white shirt being turned into a retirement piece. ‘After breaking the cover, he stooped down to drink some water and then jumped into it to bathe,’ he repeated the delayed telecast of the incidence.

There I stood helplessly watching the scene of crime. At the other end of the terrace, the bather shook off its fur to get into action for some more acts of the same kind. Hadn’t he growled the other day, ‘I will see you some other day!’ I should have remembered.

A lot of work awaits me now. The tank has to be cleaned and the cover fixed. So thinking better of saving my energies, I get to the task. What is the use of getting involved with such hooligans? They are absolutely free to be ever-busy in petty as well as big crimes.

I feel like giving in and work with a sad visage. I don’t even have the spirit left to shoo away the offender’s kid, a tiny chit of a monkey who must have clapped as its father showed him how to bathe in clean waters. The rascal junior took away the sole guava, which I had seen early in the morning, well hidden among the leaves and promising a good tasteful bite. The rhesus brat rolled away with its eatable ball.

My pride is wounded. Why carry pride at all if it gets wounded? I reflect over this and decide to be more humble.

The peacock looks lithe and smart. It moves easily and takes a longer flight to land on the terrace. It has shed its plume. The burden of love, the huge load of shiny feathers to woo ladies, gone and here it is roaming around carelessly. It seems to be enjoying the real fun of life. Gone is that tension and agitated sense of purpose. When it’s dancing with its load, it does just for the pea-hens. Now it moves around of its own.

Love seems to be pretty burdensome as judged from this episode. There should be a passion for life in totality. Love is just a nice part of living joyfully. And don’t be crazy about anything or anyone in particular. I think a reasonable amount of self-love does wonders to one’s quality of life. It’s the bedrock of all other expressions of love, be it relationships, arts, hobbies, careers, everything in fact.

The jingling notes in the silverbill nest are higher now. It means the hatchlings are plumper. The barn-kitten has fallen in love with the jingling music above in the branches. It’s another matter that he wants to taste the music as well. I hope his neck doesn’t get a sprain due to the continuous upward ogling. The doormat-kitten has turned lazier by several notches. There is a high risk that if I take away the bowl, he will howl himself to death. He survives by continuously looking at it. What a focus?

The neighbourhood simpleton goes lumbering like a kind elephant in the street. We call him Bo. There is no rhyme and reason why he is christened as such. He is big in body and very light in head. A wonderful state to be in! He looks so relaxed! His sole target seems to become the one who smoked the most number of beedies in life. So most of the time he comes along as a rolling, rumbling steam engine puffing out smoke with the exception that he doesn’t give sparks. He has no fire, he is so cool. O yes, I remember now. He gets some odd sparks sometimes.

There is another simpleton at the other end of the village. Our simpleton gives angry sparks the moment he sees the rival in our locality. He runs after him, remembering that the encroacher does the same if he goes to their locality. A war of turfs, I suppose. They have divided the village in two parts and rule over their respective territories according to their simple, easy, relaxed guidebook of life.

Bo is a class of his own. He can continue eating without realizing that one’s stomach has limits. His massive legs sometimes carry scars of injuries. He just rolls up his pyjama. That much he does, of course. The rest of the issue is handled by Mother Nature as his scars heal like elephant wounds despite the entire spoilsport played by the fleas and all.

He walks with his hands crossed, not on his chest, but on his back. He is not interested to take on anything upfront by crossing hands across his chest as most of the non-simple types do. He simply lazily lumbers ahead and will see through you as if you are a ghost and he hasn’t seen you. Greet him in the sweetest or the shrillest manner. It’s the same to him. He is unaffected. But he has blessed me with some rare greetings a few times as we crossed each other in the street. ‘Kya haal hai!’ he would say and move on without waiting for any return of expression. Well, he is in a league of his own, just because we don’t know much about their version of perception of the world, we call them simpletons. But who knows, maybe they are more joyful than most of us.

Bo is seen coming down the street. Wait, he gives his rare fiery spark! Is the rival from the other quarter around? He surely is around, just that it’s the red-bottomed and pink-balled rhesus alpha male. Bo takes him as a rival in his territory and throws a big piece of brick at the target. The ruffian simian jumps over and vanishes away. The brick smartly hits the streetlight fixed at the corner of a house. The monkey has ensured that the tiny square will go dark for a few days at least. Bo doesn’t give any reaction as I look first at him and then at the broken light and repeat the same a few times. ‘Kya haal hai?’ he graces me with his greeting. ‘Bahut badhiya,’ I say. I seem congratulating him on his perfect aim at the streetlight. But then he has already moved on. I am happy that big Bo has taken the monkey king as a rival. His bottom will be swollen and redder any day.

Ambling along the Afternoon Rains

 

There was a series of vigorous clapping as I beat the air pretty hard. Fut Fut Fut, the notes cascaded like hellfire and torpedoes in mankind’s war games. Was I wildly applauding some sporty excellence? No, it was done in defence. The dengi-copter had just landed on my turf. Dengi-copters don’t fire missiles at the enemy. They draw their spears out to suck blood and inject fever that most often requires a bigger needle to undo the deed.

It was a huge one, the dengi-copter. With the cases of dengue rising pretty fast, my defence batteries quickly responded just before the enemy strike after its landing on my turf. Defence missiles clapped rapidly. The main problem in being a lazy writer is that the dengi-copter is almost sure of beating your defence system. The hostile object dozed, dived, uplifted and turned with expert manoeuvring. It flew away to safety. My palms bore the brunt of the strenuous effort. But aren’t the guns very hot after firing?

Well, they say the movement of a hand on one continent has the capacity to bring rains to some other continent. My clapping seemed to have disturbed the atmospherics somehow. The afternoon was at the threshold of evening and a strong wind built up in response to my forceful clapping.

The trees greeted the wind with humility and obedience. Different trees have their unique styles of greeting the wind. A peepal has strong branches and supple emotional leaves—no wonder they are heart shaped and shake a lot—that get easily ruffled by the winds. The riot of emotional shakings in its canopy gives the sound of a small waterfall from a distance.

The stoic banyan is too sturdy both in leaves and the branch wood to be easily disturbed by the wind. It prefers to stand almost unmoved like an old mendicant in the Himalayas, his body stable, emotions in equanimity and mind without turmoil, the weather elements just moving his saggy beard a bit.

A neem is pretty easy to be appeased by the touch of the wind. Its branches and leaves freely dance to the windy tunes.

The parijat leaves are almost metallic in strength but the wood is soft and flexible, so it shakes with a stiff neck, nodding this way and that.

The monsoon-fed acacia has long slender branches that heartily flirt with the windy boys.

My vigorous round of clapping definitely disturbed the atmospheric elements. The wind pulled clouds, big wagons of clouds in fact. Some travelled very low and fast. The trees applauded their approach. The cloudy wagons rubbed past each other and thunder and lightning reprimanded the agitated trees.

The wind buffeted. It started drizzling. A group of swallows flew for fun—not for hunting dragonflies for a change—in this windy drizzle. You can very well make out the playful dives from the serious insect-hunting sorties. There is a difference between professional duties and vacations. They flew against the wind, flapped their wings dynamically, holding their positions at a shaky point for some time, then diving along an incline, now rising against the wind.

When the birds decide to take a bath in a windy drizzle, it’s a sight to watch. A pigeon also flew like a drunkard, moving this way and that way. A group of three monkeys enjoyed slip-downs over the inclined solar panels on the rooftop. The gently inclined wet solar panels serve a nice rooftop entertainment park for them. No problem with that. The main issue is that the rhesus monkeys hardly know the point at which their fun game changes to outright criminality against humanity. Their fun and criminality lie so close that just a leaf drop is sufficient to turn them synonymous.

The kittens barged in as if the world was up for its last moments. And so did a grasshopper. It was a grasshopper that hated bathing perhaps. It assumed it was also escaping like the kittens. The slight difference being that it was escaping from life in this instance. It landed straight in front of the barn-kitten whose arrival in the veranda was rewarded with a nice evening snack.

To the doormat-kitten the life is too precious so it went into the invisible folds of the farthest hiding point. The barn-kitten but isn’t averse to have a few drops of water on its fur in lieu of munching grasshopper nutcrackers. So the grasshopper escaped to death. The kitten got a snack. The wind dropped. The trees stood silent and the wayward drizzle turned into a steady rain.

The music of rain on subdued, unmoving leaves is wonderful. It seems as if the trees have opened their soul to the rains. The rain-bathing birds called an end to their flying showers. The flirtatious clouds matured to a stable grey homogeneity. They looked settled for a good rainy spell now. The monkeys forgot their rascality and hid under the solar panels. Without their tomfoolery they look so bloody moron, sullen and sad as if the entire sorrow of the cosmos has fallen upon them.

It steadily rained till the evening stood at the threshold of a gloomy dusk. Then the clouds decided there has been enough bathing down here. They resolved to take rest. A tiny bit of pale yellow in the western sky conveyed the unseen goodbye of the setting sun.

The birds that had stopped midway on their evening march to their nesting places started again as they shook off their feathers and started their remaining journey to be with their near and dear ones.

The monkeys came out of their sad imprisonment. They got onto the top edges of the solar panels and shook their bodies forcefully with vengeful excitement in order to uproot the plates (the very same plates that had given them fun as well as shelter), failing which they moved along the parapets to look out for the things they would be able to break.

The kittens also crawled out of a big empty home delivery carton and looked at the bowl. This kind of rest does wonders to their appetite. Hunger is written so vibrantly over their faces that I am reminded the same about myself. I can’t just wait like them to manage hunger. I have to go into the kitten. And a nice, gentle spell of evening cooking proceeds in a bachelor’s kitchen. Isn’t life beautiful? It surely is provided we accept it as such and learn to see its beauty and ignore the ugly.

Some Moments of Rough-hewn Peace

 

Here is a bit of advice for amateur cooks who are just learning the tricks of the kitchen affairs. Never compare your cooked items with the best food that you have tasted in the genre. Compare it with the worst you ever experienced. The challenge then is only this much that you fight to save yours turning out to be the worst. In this there is more chance that you will pass the test. I do the same as I try new things in the kitchen.

I usually put my product in relation to a peasant woman’s offerings. Well, they are a nice couple. They have good hearts but a good heart doesn’t always mean good cooking mind also. She smiles like an innocent girl but her food will challenge you at many levels. The main test is to stop your tears as her pure smile wants you to finish the thing. But then she has what many good female cooking minds don’t have, a good heart and a pure smile. Most importantly, I get a benchmark in taste, which I can very easily build upon. I manage it easily and that’s pretty encouraging. 

Carpenter ants are the elephants of the ant-world. They are big, have nice protruding pliers that can take a nice nibble at the human skin. We played a bloody game with them as kids. Put a tiny bit of saliva on its snout, out come its fangs, ready to sink into the target. Then we would offer our skin, mostly it was the big toe. Being the bigger elder in the paw family carries extra responsibility. The angry big ant would then bite and sink its double-pronged weapon into the skin. The bigger and angrier ones sank it pretty deep. Then we would have our sadistic glee. Pull the ant from behind. It would snap into two. The front still sunk into the toe skin and the behind in the fingers for some childish post-mortem. The insertion would then be plugged out, leaving a little trail of blood. The one who had the privilege of messing up the toe to the best extent would declare himself a winner.

A pretty disturbing game, I accept. But that’s the world of boys in the farming community. They cannot have mushy teddy bears in soft beds. So they pick out carpenter ants.

Well, that was decades ago. We carry much softer skins now. Sitting on a chair and writing, I raise my foot out of the big black ant’s way as it crawls ahead. These are very sensitive times. An ant bite can spoil the entire day, so why take risk. It moves on and meets a fellow big ant coming from the other direction. They stop and snuggle up to twitch their antennas. It seems a pretty hearty gossip. They can actually identify their own kin relations from the same nest. It is a kind of chemical signal. Here they are strangers belonging to different nests. They just move on after this brief greeting.

Big loafs of clouds are drifting across the sky’s blue. A single strand of cobweb is flying in the soft breeze. Its one end is still moored somewhere. The sunlight sends a molten wave of shiny silver cascading across this thin medium as the reflection moves up and down the thin line. Well, the nature knows how to entertain itself.

There are plenty of flowers in the unkempt garden: red, pink, white and yellow roses; white and lilac sadabahars: red, white and scarlet hibiscus; soft red and orange geraniums; deep red peregrina; mild indigo petunia; purple red and pink bougainvillea, gentle red of Jesus thorn; white of the pinwheel or light of the moon; and little white blooms of parijat that keep the smiles going well into the night’s dark. They say that a fairy is born every time a flower dies. In the garden there must be plenty of fairies then. If it’s true then I request them to drive away the snakes hiding around. But maybe snakes are mere wormy playthings to the fairies. Why would they even bother the reptiles?

An unkempt garden carries multitudes of advantages for someone looking for solitude. There are little inconveniences of snakes and mice though. These but can be managed with a cat. The cat itself is a big inconvenience but its disadvantages pale in comparison to a snake. A cat will irritate you, the snake, on the other hand, scares the hell out of you. The main advantage of a dishevelled courtyard is that it carries a miniature forest type of feeling. Many birds set up their nests. There is an entire world of insects on the ground. The branches wave at you with unconditional friendliness. By the way, the beautiful greenish bee-eaters have skipped their monsoonal trip to the garden this year. Last year there were many who chucked out dragonflies midair and feasted on the branches. So the dragonflies have better times this season. 

The monkeys seem well determined to out-populate the humans. I saw simian child brides carrying babies with much effort. The big rascal is now into child marriages. The worst are the adolescent males. They pluck mischief out of thin air. The other day, one gallant tried puppy-ride. It jumped onto the back of a puppy. The latter tried to maintain its run but crashed after a few panicked gallops. It howled for a complete hour as if it had been boiled alive. The elder canines yelped and barked helplessly. Then a blacksmith gypsy arrived in the street and shouted for the sale of his rudimentary sheet-iron tools and utensils. The street dogs find it utterly unbearable. Forgetting the monkeys, they walk in a long trail after the wandering hawker. The victim puppy also draws out pride and walks with taut tail as part of the retinue. Having brief memories really helps them.

The lazy kitten is obsessed about the bowl. All day it looks at it and doesn’t spare licking even the empty basin repeatedly to ensure there isn’t a single molecule left to make the ants happy. I am fed up with its unrelenting demands. It needs to be taught that life doesn’t centre around food only.

To break its invisible magnetic chain tying it to the bowl, I have devised a mechanism. A cat hates water, even more than the dogs I suppose. So I spray water at it sometimes when it seems that the craze for the bowl is crossing all limits and it may turn a lunatic cat. It finds it scarier than even a grenade blast and shoots off to hide in the barn, another matter that it has learnt to forget it too easily and crawl out after a few minutes.

After getting a mild shower, it sat sullenly under the parijat tree. That’s the best I have been able to push it so far, just taking that much effort to look in the direction of a prey. High in the branches there is a soft jingling of chirps. The silverbill has her house full. It stares into the globular grassy nest, waiting for the impatient dumpling to commit the error of stepping out too prematurely and tumble down on a cat’s table. A lot of them do it in fact, so cats usually wait patiently under the nests for days on end, looking for that slight misadventure by the soft, meaty hatchling.

The silverbill parents have very soft trills of objection to this gluttonous stare. The reprimanded kitten’s brother also joins in the staring game. There they eat the nest with their eyes. A tailor bird couple finds it deeply disturbing. They have tailored their nest somewhere in the lower branches. The stitched nest of three leaves is well camouflaged. But they cannot take a risk. ‘Why are you staring this way?’ they shoot back. These little creatures are well made for quarrels. They are ready for it all the time. A few babblers also join their little, winged brethren. Soon it’s a big brawl. The cats find it unbearable for their ears and leave in disgust.

The other day, a big-mouthed fatty male cat arrived in the yard. The bowl-licker turned on its heels and scampered into the veranda and became invisible. The bowl is too precious, so this life has to be kept safe. The barn-dweller kitten crouched more in defence, its hair upright and gave a preeny, sharp, crying set of growls and a hideous series of mewing. At least it tried to stand guard.

The bigger male knows that this tiny rascal will take away his girls in future so finds him an enemy. The smaller Romeo also knows that to win a girl in future it has to pass this test. All around it seems just a fight for girls across the species. The bigger rival toppled the smaller one. I stand and watch. I know exactly when to intervene. I know at what point it may turn fatal for the little cat. But before that the little one has to show that it can fight. The bigger suitor for girls is almost double in size, so the smaller one rolls on its back and raises its front paws like an expert pugilist. It growls and hisses hideously and furtively throws around its punches. That’s the fighting spirit!

As an underdog you fight to save your neck and give a few scratches on the opponent’s face. When was a fight decided by the body size? It’s basically in the spirits. The tiny firecracker forces the big bully to retreat. After the fight it looks pretty ruffled and roughened up. But it has shown enough spirit and willpower to remind the bully cat that his girls will have a dashing young lover very soon.

The sissy bowl-lover crawls out and goes out to check his brother. He cuddles and puts the fighter’s ruffled moustache in order by affectionate licking. Cat, no problem with your bowl-driven aesthetics. You love your bowl; he has his eyes already on love beyond the fence.

The major advantage of getting married in teens is that you become a grandparent in just your early forties. There are many such grandparents in the village. If a grandson is born to such couples, they have enough youth in their legs to shake to bawdy Haryanvi songs in celebration.

Yesterday the air shivered with loud thumps and beats of coarse music as the mammoth woofers and speakers shook the walls to match the pride and happiness of a couple that turned grandparents in just their early forties. Liquor flew freely. The Haryanvi songs created a kind of earthquake.

The drunkards have such audacious lungs to even shout over the loudest music. They even out-sanitized the normal people during the pandemic. As very healthy and disciplined people fell victim to corona virus, the drunkards stood well and safe surprisingly. Possibly the repeated sanitization of throats with alcohol proved better than hand sanitization. They even know it. In fact they boast about it. Even the worst drunkard, nearest to death in the village, kept his shouts and drunken pouts farthest from the least traces of a feeble sneeze. He is still alive and kicking and drinking well. ‘And we don’t take even a single precaution like you guys!’ they boast in a condemnatory tone at the lesser non-drinking mortals. Well, that shouldn’t encourage more drinking. Living without awareness is no living at all. We have to be in our senses to enjoy our pleasures and cope up with the pains.

The suggestive, lewd gyrations of Haryanvi songs created a whirlpool of fiery passions and the drunkards raised a lot of dust in the street. After hours of merry-making, there has to be a big loud-mouthed brawl also, as a kind of dessert after the main course. The expenditure on liquor seems a waste if there is no quarrel at the far end of celebrations. The quarrel serves a big purpose, without it the celebrations won’t stop. So there was a causeless brawl in which all shouted for being the worst victims of their fellow merry-makers’ nastiest tyranny.

Here a surprise sprang up. The numero uno drunkard, who is permanently sloshed and roams the streets, raising brawls with dogs, monkeys and humans in equal measure, turned stoic. Doing as others do isn’t his forte. So in the hours-long brawl, his drunk voice was the only sound of sanity. He sounded like a piously drunk sage. The next day, when the rest of the humanity turned sane, he regained his lost status and raised extra ruckus in the streets as if to make up for the loss of those moments.

Kittens in the Garden

 

It was a potted hibiscus plant. Its white flowers appeared to appeal for more freedom. ‘I can give you a drizzle of smiles, just give me some more space!’ the plant beseeched. It’s advisable to be considerate and sensitive towards smiles. A smile is a gift. One should simply take it without thinking too much. Overthinking ruins smiles. So the plant was fixed on a larger stage in the flower bed. It simply launched itself into fulfilling its promise of more smiles. A very robust hibiscus it became. Multitudes of big white flowers laugh now in abundance among its glossy, richly green leaves. Once in a while, it decides to spring a surprise and a baby-pink flower smiles among dozens of its pristine white flowers. Is it to spring a surprise to the human keeper of the flower bed? 

Yesterday evening I stooped down to pick up the shovel and my left eye got into the space of a soft bud. It’s a direct hit. But a bud isn’t too bad on one’s eyes even at its worst. I felt the impact and moderate pain. As I squinted and looked at the playful bud with the other eye, I found it was the pink bud. The wince and grimace is gone. I smile as a bit of water trickled down. ‘Don’t worry, I’m here to give you smiles, not tears,’ the bud promised.

And today it keeps its promise. It’s a dazzling baby-pink flower among its flashing white siblings. The eye that had a tear now gets a beautiful vision, a kind of nourishing tonic. It shows we can very well choose to play down the involuntary hurts to our hearts and bruises to our egos. Most of the unintentional fallouts on us carry the prospects of good intentions in future, provided we don’t nip it in the bud, carried by our instinctive, compulsive reaction. Patience and understanding turn life wholesome.

Today, the clouds and the sun have an equal say in the sky. Huge loafs of greyish white clouds drift like bulky airy ships. They are scattered on the blue canvas. Monsoon is certainly losing its grip at last. There are many who would say a happy goodbye to the seasonal rains this year. The clouds have been pretty benevolent. They now roll and rumble over the sun. There are shifting shadows on the ground, a kind of busy activity before the change of baton.

A shikra, a small hawk, swoops down and plucks away an adventurous lizard from the neem’s trunk. Maybe the lizard was bored with its cornered life among the walls and looked for more of life and living outside the fence. Well, it’s part of the little hawk now and can certainly look at the bigger world through the predator’s eyes. Isn’t it a marvellous recycling, the prey turns into the predator as it gets digested to form the flesh and blood in the new body?

Last evening even the kitten was equally smart in turning a lizard into a cat. It is turning very lazy and finds hunting very boring, especially given the fact that the bowl is there to pacify its gluttony. So why take the trouble to hunt?

I didn’t change the status of the empty bowl with a purpose. It kept on sullenly looking from me to the bowl throughout the afternoon. No wonder, the need to hunt arose. There was this beautiful lizard that passed its days in the roof drainpipe. It led a nice and comfortable life I think. It would crawl out to even sunbathe sometimes.

The kitten has turned so lazy that it won’t bother to even make an attempt at it as the bowl is usually placed near the pipe’s mouth near the ground. It would just do justice to the bowl’s contents and the lizard got more time to get tanned. But last evening, the kitten was steely and resolved to do something about the issue of hunger. The bowl had turned heartless and wasn’t responding to the kitten’s magic trick of staring at it continuously and the pure desi cow milk materialized. It then realized the snack that had been crawling right under its nose. Maybe even the lizard had turned careless after too much of seeing the snoozing and sleeping little cat.

We have our bad days, all of us, don’t we? It had been a bad day for the fasting kitten and now it was the turn for the lizard’s evening to be really bad. The hungry kitten pounced wholeheartedly and ate the lizard in one lot. I could just see the tail twitching as it too went inside to turn silent finally. To tell you frankly, I myself felt as a partner in crime for having abetted this hunt. Is any of our acts free from being a kind of sin for someone else?

The monkeys are still more energetic today. A kitchen seems to be raided in the neighbourhood. The utensils cry at the top of their voice. A very offensive oath is hurled. The culprits run out and jump onto a gulmohar in front of our house, severally damaging the still remaining branches. They just love breaking it down. The tree appears like there was no monsoon at all. I have seen so many rascal simians loafing around with twigs in their mouths as if they use it as a toothbrush.

One of the extra-judicious among them has picked up a white shirt from the house bearing the rattled kitchen. It’s the very same white shirt that the poor farmer uses on all occasions ranging from cremations to marriage functions. I think the shirt is relieved of its duties now. The buttons that proudly rolled through the farmer’s fingers to find their place through the slits to get locked safely are now passing through the simian teeth. The buttons are chewed to satisfaction. Seething with impotent rage, the farmer hurls a full brick into the tree. The missile doesn’t go too far and lands among the dogs who are throwing abuses from the side of humans. The dogs give a nice presentation of a stampede as they go howling, possibly abusing the humans now.

Put the strongest of a man face-to-face against the weakest of a monkey. The latter will at least ensure to mock an attack before showing its red bum as long as the man is standing straight or even has a stick. That much pride they salvage.

The best trick against the monkeys is to suddenly crouch low as if you are picking up a nuclear warhead, even though there is nothing to pick up. It just scares them out of their wits. They forget to feign their customary mock attack and instantly give you the pleasure of gloating over the pink of their bum. With this technique, even the weakest of a human can scare away the strongest of a monkey. I find it more effective than holding a stick and challenge them in a fair and square way. Maybe they take their feigned attacks as victory, so I have to deprive them of it also.

The big neighbourhood news is that another street dog has been slapped by the big simian harem-keeper. But this dog itself is a bully who beats smaller puppies. So I don’t hold anything against the pink-balled villain, at least in this regard. But the rest of his crimes stand with full force against him.  

The silverbill seems to have carried good luck with the arrival of kittens in the yard. I have keenly observed monsoon-time globular nestings of the scaled munias and silverbills in the garden trees over the years. There hasn’t been a single successful hatching so far. Mostly the culprits have been the squirrels who just love sneaking into the globular safe house and have nice, crunchy egg-snacks. The cute bird can’t even throw abuses, they just trill almost inaudibly.

As the Mama cat arrived with her little ones, she ensured that all other claimants to the property are disposed off first. So there she squatted patiently among the flowers and expertly turned the striped hunters into preys one by one. The squirrels then turned into the little kittens as the latter gobbled up the soft meat pies offered by their Mama.

The squirrels paid for their villainy of the past many seasons. But then even the cats have to pay for the same. The dogs will ensure that, don’t worry. So the globular, messy nesting has hatching this time. I can hear their happy jingling notes sometimes. The kittens also know that there is great meal over there but it’s placed too high among the top branches. Staring there just gives them some kind of neck and eyes tratak yoga, nothing more. But it’s a good time pass for them nonetheless.

We have talked a lot about these kittens. Let’s go into the beginning of the story for the benefit of our readers. Feral Mama cats are very resourceful in raising their brood. They would keep shifting their kittens across barns and yards till they find a safe one. Then they would take leave of absence for few hours and hunt outside. Meanwhile, the kittens just hide like a mouse. The entire days and nights of the cat Mama are spent in hunting as the boys and girls are a first rate example of unquenchable gluttony. As the kittens grow, the Mama cat’s visits turn to twice a day, then once, then once in a couple of days and then she would forget them once she realizes that they can mind their own business now. What saintly detachment after fulfilling the responsibilities?        

She arrived with her baby twins and seemed to say, ‘Your unkempt garden and the shabby barn is ours.’ During the initial days they were scared and pretty subdued. The continuous rat supply by their Mama and the passage of days added to their confidence and now they believed that it is their place just like I take it as my own for being born here. The only difference is that we have designed a registration paper for the property. They but hold it in their heart and with even bigger confidence, I tell you. They seem to be very strong in their conviction about the ownership of the place.

The kittens then mewed with predatory intent. They meant it and raised their fur to look strong enough to defend their right. I had no option and handed over the title deed to these rascally kittens, twin brothers. They were all cuddly love for each other, except when their mother appeared after two or three days with a fat rat. Both of them pounced upon the mother's pudding. The stronger one dragged the other along with the fat rat. The poor claimant let go of the fat rat and watched from a distance as the bigger rascal had his tummy full. The watcher then sneaked in to claim the leftovers.

The bigger rascal is a very strong southpaw. He expertly keeps kicking at the face of his brother while gobbling down the bigger chapatti pieces. He boxes rather, gives an effective over the top smash. Once it takes burps of contentment and proudly puts its moustache in order, the other one again comes out to do justice to the leftover pieces. No wonder, the bigger rascal is exponentially getting bigger in body also. That's life at the level of plants, animals, birds and insects. They fight to survive. We also do the same. But we have the extra option of consciously cooperating to create something. That means we are just a bit smarter animals.

The weaker one nurtured its aesthetics, a cuddly cuteness to win human affection. It prefers the doormat unlike the other one who prefers the courtyard and the barn. The bowl-lover finds the bowl a kind of centre of the world. Consequently its stage is very small, which means lesser of life and living. It’s always looking either at me or the bowl. He thinks he has a very nice bowl-keeper, I suppose.

The other one loves outdoors in the yard and looks confidently into the camera as I take a picture. It has a larger stage and hence a bigger and more exciting life. The kitten with fragile, vulnerable aesthetics looks scared and suspiciously into the camera.

Both of them are males and already seem to have carved out their territories. The outdoor type even goes out and tries to catch rats sometimes when he is fed up with lizards, skinks, leeches and frogs in the yard. He shares milk also with his brother but doesn’t drink much. He just moves away midway, stretching his back with contentment. He’s basically a non-veg kind of guy. I’m sure he will come of age earlier and successfully follow a cat girl. Only then he will forget the garden after being whiplashed by the hormonal storm of youth.

I am worried about the other one. It may turn out to be too cute to chase a girl with success. I mean the cat girl may play with it sometimes but I doubt if she will find it worth being the Papa of her kids. This doormat-sleeper has to toughen up a bit. I will devise ways and means in that direction. Scaling down the bowl-magic will help, I think.

Ikigai on a Dusty Table

 

An absolutely dazzling morning gives me a wholesome smile. The sunrays are golden. How kind he is! The sky is pristine blue. How happy it looks! The wispy, scattered fluffs of clouds a dazzling white. How playful they are! There is cool gentle breeze that carries swarms of dragonflies hovering around like insect drones. How confident and coquettish is the breeze!

There is a grumpy, rumbling and scratchily drawn series of notes sent out by a bird. The Himalayan barbet, it strikes me. The barbet is the one that has played symphony with my solitude in the valleys when I move around the lone trails among the hills. Now here in the plains, the rains have broken all previous records for the month of September. I suppose all the dispirited, famished countryside from the Himalayan foothills to the dusty plains in the Delhi NCR has turned pretty luxuriant to keep the spirits of some lone Himalayan barbet to keep flying, carried by the wanderlust spirits and here it reaches the village to remind of those beautiful days in the valleys, where its call droned over the lazy slopes in misty vales. Well, I run out to the courtyard to find that dreams are dreams only, at least in this instance. The reality is a separate entity. But it’s only our dreams that provide a kind of lease to our reality. So keep your dreams alive. The reality here is a spotted dove that has slightly modified its notes to sound like a barbet. Hope he isn’t trying to woo a barbet girl in case there is one around.

Too much of rains definitely carry lots of inconvenience. It isn’t good for the crop. Not good for old houses either. They get more cracks. More plaster and paint gets peeled off to turn walls and yards mossy. The leeches crawl in abundance. Tiny frogs scamper around like little dumplings on your path as you walk around. You have to be careful not to trample too many and add to your quota of sins here on earth. But then baby frogs are visible at least. We can hardly take enough caution not to trample the ants. They are too small. In that case, I realize we are standing on our own mounds of sins. That’s why it’s so important to lead a meaningful life because it comes at the cost of so many little sins. Coming to the issue of excess rains, the bricks in the yard also cave in. Too much of rain isn’t good for the snakes either. Their holes get filled up and they crawl out to claim residency in houses, especially the unkempt gardens of lazy bachelors.

The old country house might get more cracks, giving me a little frown of discomfort. But that is very easily overpowered by a smile caused by the vastly improved shape of the chapattis. They look more presentable, and more importantly are nicely digestible. Greying men in their forties need to be bothered more about stomach and less about tongue. Taste is a secondary take off.  

Around twenty or so black kites glide down in circles over the village. The black kite is a carnivorous scavenger. They basically fly over the Ghazipur area in New Delhi. There they are a common sight, scavenging muddy trash from the mountainous garbage dump site and the banks of the stinking rivers of sewage. They kind of symbolize the urban slums and sleaze. They are wrongly named, I suppose. The black kite is dark brown in colour. But it does a yeomen service to the municipal cleaners as the scavenging raptor, with its white-speckled feathers, deep-set eyes and a sharply curved beak, does a nice cleaning job of the leftovers on the urban table of carousel and craze. They are opportunistic hunters who just love to scavenge. Most of their time is spent in gliding and soaring among the thermals looking for food.

So here they float with their buoyant flight, gliding effortlessly, diving, uplifting and changing directions with perfect ease, just a few seconds of flapping of wings and minutes-long glide. You have to be very stable to spot the hunt below on the ground. Once the radar catches the prey, the raptors swoop down with legs lowered, snatching the garbage, fish, household refuse or carrion. In the British military slang they are known as the shite-hawk.

They are known to be very opportunist hunters. The lazy fliers with big motives are attracted to fires and smoke because they know that lots of prey would be running to escape the fire. According to a native Australian belief, the kites are witty enough to spread forest fires. They pick up burning twigs and drop them among the bushes to start a fire so that there is a stampede of little rodents running away from the burning house. That’s a pretty criminal act even as per the laws of raw nature. It smells of human conspiracy.

In the crowded Indian cities, they soar in thermals in large numbers and sometimes even swoop down and snatch pizzas from human hands. They have become taste conscious in human company, I think.

The black kites hovering in the village skies is not a usual sight. I haven’t seen many. Well, it proves the quick rate of changing times. Even the villages have lots of garbage dumped at many sites these days. So maybe these are the colonizer kites that have left the congested Delhi skies and are migrating to seek fresher, sorry filthier, pastures. In any case, birds always look better, even if they are hawkish, scavenging raptors. The sky looks healthy with their winged ruffles and tickles in its ribs. And more birds, of any sort, give a feeling that not everything is lost yet.

One of the kittens has turned very lazy, the one who loves sleeping on the doormat in the veranda. The extrovert spends time in the barn. They are turning into handsome lads. The extrovert one takes the pain to hunt beyond the walls and enjoys the freedom. The lazy one is going to realize its mistake once the time for wooing ladies comes. Girl cats won’t give him too much of attention. When he isn’t sleeping, he is staring at me, his eyes pleading to fill the bowl once more. It’s very irritating. If the stomach is full by default, thanks to the bowl, why would one take the trouble of learning to hunt? A boy cat that doesn’t hunt rats in its adolescence hardly stands a chance to hunt the love of a cat girl after coming of age. It’s committing a fatal mistake, I tell you.  

The dining table in the veranda is piled high with the things that I need now and then. That’s pretty convenient. I usually take out my plate into the unkempt garden and eat among the flowers, and in the company of the snakes hidden somewhere nearby. With the things piled high on it, the dining table won’t complain of idleness. I keep a corner free to set my old laptop there and write.

The switchboard just above my head has an abandoned fan regulator whose speed knob has come off, leaving a circular opening into the rectangular plastic case. It’s the favourite house of fun for the lizards and stinging yellow wasps. The lizards have fun but then they get burns also. I have found their skeletons inside. Was it electrocution or they love this site to go dying during their last days, I am not sure.

As of now the lizards have abandoned their tenancy on the property. It’s now leased to the yellow stinging wasps. No problem with that. Just that my head is direct in the line of their aerial route as they land home. A crash-landing would mean a painful fire on my face. We humans carry a lot of caution in our genes. Most of this is unnecessary fear that we pride ourselves with being cautious. I am no different. I plug the opening with a piece of clothing. The house is shut. They then peep across the narrow air slits, craning out their twitching antennas, probably staring at me, taking a vow to take revenge.

I am not yet ready to allow a house of dead wasps right over my head. Their insect souls may interfere with my chain of thoughts while writing, so I look for alternatives. I sprinkle a very mild dose of mosquito repellent; just enough to give them cough and sneeze perhaps, wear my helmet, drape my chador around like an Afghan woman and take out the cloth piece. They troop out hurriedly, buzz around angrily like anyone who has been forcibly evicted from his house. They are justified in their anger. They don’t carry its remnants like we humans. They will soon forget and make a nice nest somewhere else. It’s always easy to start anew with unbruised feelings.

Most of us are working harder than ever, even earning more than ever, with far less joy and happiness in life. Well, working for survival is necessary. We have to accept that. We aren’t unhappy because we are forced to do many things against our will. We are unhappy because we haven’t explored our Ikigai, the spring source of doing small things that makes us happy. Do big things for a living but never miss small things for your own inner smile.

All of us have that little corner of aesthetics in us. Plant roses in that. It will give you unconditional smiles. It can be anything that makes you feel at ease, releases the tension, and calms your nerves. Explore your Ikigai.  Even now it’s lying just near you, not visible because it’s very small.

We have been conditioned to prioritize the big things in life. Nothing wrong with that. But don’t miss the little flowers around your feet as you move on your path. Bend down and pick out your little wild, untamed flower. Nurture a hobby that has nothing to do your professional life. Think big time with your mind and love little things in your heart. Like I earn ‘joy’ primarily from my writings. Had I been writing for money, I would have stopped long time ago. It’s my Ikigai, what is yours?