Melodious Regalement of a Slow-paced Life

 

I am all for animal rights and against people using them in street circuses. Still I cannot help but feel the pining nostalgia of the monkey charmers during our grand old days in childhood. Those were the only well-behaved monkeys. Nicknamed Ramlal, Dharmender, Basanti, etc., clad in baby frocks and shirts, they were almost the devatas of the simian world. Holding a stick on his shoulders, Dharmender walked on two legs to fetch his wife Basanti from her mayaka. And Basanti would say a shy ‘no’ to come back. He would then dance, put on goggles and even smoke a beedi with a masculine swag to woo her back. The little street show would proceed without even a single piece of the simian mischief! Why are people looking for the eighth wonder of the world? It already has been witnessed by so many of us.

Well that was past. The times have changed. Do you remember the terrace pole overlooking the open bathroom below in the house having four adolescent farmer girls? The crow’s favourite perch point. A monkey thinks why should the crows have all the fun. So it has grabbed the pointed hot seat and is hanging from the top end. If the motive is the same as that of the crow then it almost falls within the criminal jurisprudence of the humans because the offender is very similar to us in inclinations and gene pool. The stalker has to be brought to justice. On my part, I am praying that the pole’s top end itself does justice where the peeping tom is trying to settle its red bottom at the moment.

A monkey has to drink water but then it has to topple the vessel holding the water as well. You wonder, was drinking just a side effect and the main motive being to topple it to raise a blasting noise. A clay pitcher makes a muffled thud. Unfortunately, it gives this sound only once. My stock of clay pitchers is over. The monkeys have had a lot of fun with them. They seem to be furthering the interest of the pot-makers. This is a kind of use-and-throw fun game for the monkeys. Now the metallic ones are doing their service. Here the monkeys face a slight bit of inconvenience. The metal utensils make a sharp clattering sound and the funster has to run away on account of this noisy impact after the lewd dose of ruffianism. It’s better to turn an applauding spectator to their follies. What is the use of boiling blood with no effect? 

Just now another monkey is doing its best to derive some fun in the most unorthodox manner. There is a house under construction. On the terrace is a half-finished pillar having naked iron bars at the upper end. It’s trying its level best to turn it into the thorniest crown in the world. It must be very confident about its red bum bearing up with the risk. It’s within its rights to do so but I find it pretty foolish even by their standards. Some immature girl monkey may applaud his feat but the slightest mishap will turn him the laughing stock of both the human and simian worlds. Organizing its fickle mind in an unlikely way, it manages to sit right on top of the iron bars and looks with a kingly attitude and royal majesty. Maybe sitting on the iron bars, testing the strength of the bum, gives a totally different view of the world.     

The season is changing at long last. There are faded traces of autumn. In late morning, when the sunrays have gentle warmth, the kittens sprawl for the laziest sleep on the windswept terrace among the neem windfalls. The house crickets, the brown denizens of the nocturnal chorus, also sleep under the items they deem immobile and safe for the day. I just love disturbing them. Shake the covering off and they hop around sleepily and take a vow to drill more holes in the clothing where they can sneak in for better sleep. The winters will come after all.

On vintage autumn nights, tremulous dew-stars kiss the seasonless silence spread over the lips of darkness. Someone’s exhausted sobs and ceaseless moans now dive forever into the measureless serenity of the slumbering eternity. A peasant woman has been crying late into the night. There has been a loss somewhere. The high tide of darkness swallows the star. And the gloom adds to its invisible shades to the far.

A cow has been lowing throughout the night to get a mate. She is in heat and the farmer will surely get up with a smile in the morning because it means the prospects of fresh milk for his children. It’s definitely good news even for the village bull who hulks around looking for such chances of the fresh milk arriving at the house of the farmers.

A drunkard farmer had to be slapped first and then thrashed nicely by his tired wife late at night after he won’t stop his acrobatics at the village square. He cannot do much as of now and bears up with the punishment. But a hard kick prods out a slurred threat that he will see her in the morning. ‘In the morning my brothers will arrive to beat you even harder,’ she tells him. Then he allows himself to be dragged into the house. I have information from very credible sources that even after all this violence publicly, they have pretty busy lovemaking sessions right after.

Reading all through the night is fun sometimes. Try it someday. You share the night’s little mysteries and welcome a new day like a kind host. The day smiles in gratitude. Across the misty, cool, dewy horizon, I feel the new sun, a new fireball with blessing warm rays.

It’s a beautiful morning. The humid restlessness of the rainy season is gone and the autumnal ease now assuages the spirits. A dragonfly is resting on a sadabahar flower. Its wings stretched to perfect horizontal. It has slept till late in the morning. Did it go for some night revelry? I tease it for its night fun and tickle at the pointed back end of its slim body. It isn’t eager to get awake and just pulls itself into a kind of yawning morning-time curve. Her wings are but too precious to her. Try touching them and it is wide alert and flies away for a busy day.

A butterfly, a common mormon, is also sleeping late on a cluster of night blooming jasmine. The Parijat tree is a veritable shower of beautiful, fragrant white flowers. They drizzle down with the rise of the sun. All around her there is a scented drizzle of little flowers. Maybe it’s a boozed up butterfly that had extra fun among the night blooming jasmine flowers and is now sleeping late in the morning. A chatty tailorbird but doesn’t like the late risers and awakens the butterfly with its exuberant vocals. The butterfly flies away to make the most of the few days that mother existence has bestowed in its kitty to fulfil the purpose of its life.

The song of the birds picks up its tempo. Three pigeons fly with a friendly banter; five ducks fly in a slanted line (there aren’t as many as would allow them to form a V pattern because the water bodies have vanished and so have the visiting ducks); a lone heron flies slowly with the unhurried pace of an old gentleman; a few house sparrows dart swiftly; the dainty and handsome Indian magpie robin hops on the parapet wall (seems happy, maybe got a lover and is now joyfully silent after singing love songs in plenty for almost a week). The morning has picked up nicely.

The sky is relieved of its duty of bearing thundering, water-laden clouds on its back. Having shed all that it had to give, it now looks fresh and light. Two peacocks are also feeling very light after shedding their plumes. The weight of love is gone. Of course, love is a very weighty issue these days. They are now pecking and preening themselves pretty freely. They are quite friendly to each other because now there is no competition for winning love in their favour. I think singlehood is quite light and one can be at ease like they are now. They can fly over more distances as well.

The village has seen a lot of development around it. It has now canals and roads circuiting it. It is good. We need canals for water and roads for speedier movement. They did a fantastic job and at a great speed as if they are in a hurry. They have been very busy in making roads and missed quite simple things such as water drainage system and culverts to allow the rain water go down south and fall into the seasonal tributaries of Yamuna. So the ancient natural waterways are choked.

Since we have had excess rains this season, the surrounding farmlands and the village got filled up like a water bowl. They now use big water pumps to take out the excess water. We humans know how to be busy almost all the time. We are very serious about creating problems and then we get onto finding solutions for the same very diligently. And that keeps us very busy.

It’s good to plan development projects but we shouldn’t run to develop things at any cost. I think a leisurely walk to development will do better because we retain our common sense while doing so and don’t goof up to commit silly mistakes. Rampant development leaves many loopholes and then we have to spend a lot of energy in finding solutions for our self-created problems.

When I hold my three-month-old niece in my hands, I somehow feel fulfilled with love and care. It’s a privilege to stand by her as she fights her way out of multiple complications. Her one smile is enough to make one forget thousand miseries of life. That’s what I try: make her smile. And when it comes, that pure smile, I feel like hitting a treasure trove instantly. She scans the cloud patterns as I hold her in my arms, curious to know the strange ways of this world. Maybe the infants can see angels in the skies above.

When things around appear too complex, I pick up Bond Sahab’s book. Immediately the layers of complexity peel off and you see simplicity and purity of a world that all of us have the option to view. His books train your mind to view life in simpler terms.

Iranian movies are Bond Sahab’s cinematic equivalent in taking you to a little world of simpler facts of life. ‘The Willow Tree’ but seems too serious for an Iranian movie. There is a kind of drama that is typical of our movies here in India. A professor gets his eyesight after 40 years. There is a chasm between his feelings and what he wants to see. He wants to make up for the lost decades and wants to see more and more of life. The face of his wife, the angel who held his hand during the dark days, now appears too ordinary in comparison to the beautiful women around.

‘Ranna’s Silence’ again is a beautiful little story. Little five-year-old Ranna stops speaking after someone steals her hen, Kakoli. She loves her hen so much that hearing fox or wolf alarm beats in the fields, on the way to her school, she would run back to ensure the safety of her pet. As she lost her hen, she disowned her smile and beautiful words also. Well, she was instantly the same girl as of before as the thief realized his mistake and returned the hen. Watch it if you want to feel how small things can help us build a peaceful, simple world around us.

Hardeep comes to visit and shares the life lesson given by his father. ‘Never go to Delhi if you can manage it at Sonipat, the nearest city. And never go to the city if you can manage it at the village itself,’ he says. Well, I think it’s basically an injunction about unnecessary loitering around. As an adolescent boy he became very curious about Delhi and bunked school to wander around in the Delhi crowd for a day. His father came to know. He asked his mother to prepare a very tasty sweet halwa. Hardeep ate to his full, thinking he has been rewarded for possibly becoming the family record holder who reached Delhi at the youngest age. So he ate to his full and took happy burps. Then his father very affectionately put his hand on his shoulder as they walked to their field by the canal. It was a grove of fruit trees and handsome flowers. Its mere sight was enough to uplift anyone’s spirits. There was just one oddity in all this. There was a terribly prickly bush in between. His father made him stand by the prickly clump and tied a rope, bringing the boy and the bush in good bonhomie. Then he whipped him with a rope and made him shout ‘I will never go to Delhi’ 1001 times. ‘He saved me from doom, my kind father,’ he says. He is a trucker and a farmer now who tries to avoid bookings to Delhi even if they pay him extra.

We had a little hawan for our angel, my niece Maira. Panditji’s son missed on most of the Sanskrit slokas. He seems very good at eating the choicest delicacies served by the host though. He is very cute and one can see the effect of the hosts’ offerings on his chubby jowls. He made the mahamritunjya mantra sound like some Latin hymn. He looked very apt for eating copious food after the rituals but mastering the slokas is, frankly speaking, not his domain. The old Pandit looked helplessly and then took it upon himself to somehow salvage his honour. The goodwill for him will at least see his son getting good charity for his mispronounced half slokas. It’s basically about respect. Out of the custom of respect, we would accept wrong slokas as well. What is wrong in that? Even the wrong slokas chanted with good intentions will serve their purpose.                    

Treat of the day! The tiny sadabahar in the crack of the wall bears a flower. There are hundreds of bigger flowering plants on the ground having dozens of petalous smiles. What makes this little flower exceptional? An entire season’s rains slipped down the wall. It’s not in mother earth’s lap where she stores water for her kids. It just has a hairline crack in the plastered wall to cling to its moisture of survival. Thousands of water drops slip away and then just an ounce of water perhaps clings to the narrowest root space.

The garden has hundreds of flowers fed like pampered children. But this solitary flower high on the plastered wall is special. Blossoming is no slave to the conventional parameters of height, weight, the soil around roots, nutrition, the amount of rain or any other circumstantial fact. It’s only about giving the best with what you have.

Given its tough conditions, this tiny flower grew in millimetres, while the rest of the more privileged flowers on the ground grew in inches. Their life might be measured in feet and hundreds of flowers. But what is exceptional about the fact of their existence? They are the happy-go-lucky types. Their smiles stand on mother earth’s piety. This but is a brave flower. It clung to survival, just staying a couple of inches of a fragile sapling high in the wall in the hot sweltering summer heat. It waited and waited with patience for more rains and when they came, it added a couple of more inches to its height and there comes the flower.

It’s basically about reaching home and fulfilling your destiny irrespective of the circumstances. What we get isn’t in our hands, but what we do with what we have is surely our calling. The smile of this flower is worth hundreds of lesser mortals in the garden below. It’s a proud flower, no wonder it’s there high in the air above the rest.

So dear friends, please avoid the mistake of cribbing about your circumstances of life. A lot many things definitely lie beyond our control. It’s better to accept certain facts. Take it as destiny. But that’s just half of the story. With what has been given to you by the quirks of fate, you are in the driving seat and juggle your pieces to make your own destiny. Like this little plant does. It blossoms a flower in the toughest of a situation and completes its journey, fulfils its meaning of being a flower. You too can blossom your flower with what you have been given. So forget about what you don’t have, just make use of what you possess. You too are up for a flowery reward. Best wishes!          

The twilight lands after a hectic day. I am preparing cow-dung fire for my evening pooja ritual. A butterfly staggers nearby and swerves around on the ground. I think it is perhaps a butterfly that has forgotten it is a butterfly and takes itself to be a moth and now would love to burn itself to death. Thankfully that’s not the case. It sits quietly on the ground a few feet from the ambers. Its wings shut together in vertical; it looks a tiny sailboat in stormy waters. Possibly it feels cold and has come to enjoy a bit of warmth by the fire.

As I have already mentioned, it’s a little world of big emotions in the Iranian movies. It’s a kind of beautiful painting in motion. One has to be at peace with herself in order to enjoy these little episodically sweetened movies. ‘White Bridge’ is a little painting depicting a small world with only this difference that the characters speak here. Bahareh is an angelic child. Her world comes crashing on her little head as she loses her father in a car accident. Further, she gets an injury in her leg and now walks like a special child. More than her physical injury, it’s the mental shock that has thrown her into a pit of insecurities and fear. The school insists upon sending her to a school for special children. But she loves her old school. She sets out daily in the morning to sit by the gate of her former school. There is a little white bridge where she spends most of her time. It’s a dry little stream and the school principal throws a challenge that she may come to the school when there is water in the stream. And water flows one day. It’s not possible for the dry stream to have water in a natural way. A philosophical teacher works with a farmer to divert water into the stream. The little girl regains her confidence and proudly limps to her school.

Sublimity of Simple Ambitions

 

The three words in the name of oriental magpie robin do full justice to the beautiful, handsome, dashing black and white bird. It’s a flirtatious dandy and imitates many birdie voices when it’s just looking for fun. However, when it wants to convey its strength and masculine charm, it gives a chhrr-chhrr-chhrr type of sawing sound. But its real beauty comes when it falls in love and gives sonorous, high-pitched notes of cheeu-cheeu-cheeu for a considerable time to woo some lady. His love call scores over the rest of the birds among the trees around the house.

Flings are very easy these days but love is something one has to strive for very diligently. Since the birds cannot just have casual flings like we humans, the dandy bird has just one option of deep love and this means singing out continuous love notes as the tired monsoonal clouds retreat in the blue skies. If we leave the humans apart, the rest of the species are into the game of life full hearted, there being no half-hearted effort, be it love, war, fun and playing or committing to parental duties.

The white wagtail is a small passerine bird that sways its longish tail with attentive rhythm as it picks up ants and little insects from the ground. It’s a beautiful sight to watch the birds walking. There is a captivating grace in their little steps. The white wagtail looks an elegant well-bred lady as she walks on the ground picking up her breakfast.

The Indian rockchat also loves snapping out insects from the ground. Its looks are very modest with its pale coffee unichrome. Its fur misses the distinctive patterns or designs that make the birds look beautiful. It’s a plain-looking bird but it makes up for all this by being very talkative. Listen to their pre-dawn gossip session. They have plenty of things to gossip about before setting out to pick up breakfast.

The oriental magpie robin is busy with his love notes. The Indian robin and the white wagtail are walking with ease to pick up ants. The wire-tailed swallows are darting in the air, picking up airy food in the form of fleas, dragonflies and mosquitoes. A solitary pair of parrots goes flying. There aren’t many seen these days. A few bee-eaters are diving and turning expertly to complete their breakfast before the late morning turns to full noon. The sun is bright and the noon turns very hot, so they prefer rest during the hotter part of the day.

Huge cloudy wagons float lazily in the sky. They don’t seem to have any purpose anymore and loiter around, almost directionless, here and there.

A room with a window with some natural view is special by default. The upper room window opens to more trees than housetops. I just have to look out and the banana leaves greet happily. Inspired by this greeting and the busy birdie world with a song on its lips, I try to give my best to what attracts me the most. Not too much guess for this, it’s reading and writing.

Try to give your best even in the worst of a job. Even with very little success so far, I take my writing very seriously. There is a scope for perfection in every nook corner for all ranging from the fortune 500 CEOs to the bathroom cleaners. I have seen beaming bricklayers, stonemasons and sweepers and cribbing, frowning CEOs in the costliest cars. What is the use of hitting too big and lose your smile. Hit only that much high as would not rob you of your smile.

My smile is encouraged by the languorous hand-waving by the banana leaves as I look over the tree-tops from the upper room’s window. One sip of the view outside and another of the book in my hand. My smile tells me that life is really good. Then I read something and I turn serious. This is no smiling matter. I read that scientists are trying to revive the Siberian woolly mammoth that became extinct around 10,000 years ago. From the skeletal remains sufficient genetic material has been retrieved to clone an embryo.

This is disturbing. Why dig up the past to this extent. I think the best thing is to use genetic engineering to extricate the genes responsible for anger, hate and greed from the Homo sapiens. That would make our earth liveable, not reviving the woolly mammoth. In any case, the Siberian snows will vanish in a few decades, so where will the big animal stay. Probably they will have to repeatedly shave its wool to help it feel a bit cool.

All these musings backgrounded by the birdie songs scamper back into a corner. If you have a huge tractor bellowing its powerful engine at the best of its capacity and still louder music blaring out of the big speakers, there is no need to go near a fighter jet to test the capacity of your eardrums. The young farmer is bursting with his ebullient hormones. The bellicose tractor and rowdy music are the tools of his adolescent revolt. And the revolts have their victims. The monkeys run away. They don’t stand any match here. The birds fly to safer trees.

I cannot hop over the roofs like the monkeys, nor can I fly away like the birds. I use the faculty of discretion to fall in love with this portable discotheque now pounding the air in the neighbourhood. So I assume that I like this music and engine noise and sway my head to the tunes.

The Haryanvi desi songs are a war cry even at their gentlest best. But the raunchy ones would suitably provide fitting background music to the real third world war if it happens. Combine it with the massive heaving guffaws of a big tractor and it turns something unbelievable or unbearable. Even at your loving best you cannot afford to like it the least. As I shake my head to the war-music, the initial symptoms of headache surface. I give up. It’s better to hate it straightaway.

Never commit the mistake of complaining because in that case the proprietor of this music will teach you a lesson for your intolerance to his youthful spirit and continue with the music and tractor noise with even more volume till the time he feels convinced that you have been punished sufficiently.

The bird of peace has been shot down and I have to think of doing something else to keep my smile. I am mellowed down completely and surrender the spirit of protest for my legal right also in its wake. Which legal right? Ok, telling this now.

An hour ago, I received a call from the courier operator at the nearby town. I have been waiting for an important communication.

‘Bhai sahab your letter is lying with us. Come and pick it up from our office!’ he straightaway commands.

‘But we have paid for its delivery to my door. Won’t it be nice if I get service for my money,’ I sheepishly protest.

‘We never deliver to the villages. You have to pick it up from us otherwise I will return it by four in the evening!’ he is even louder and iron-willed. 

‘Kindly tell me, if you don’t deliver to the villages, why was the booking allowed in the first place?’

‘That I don’t know. That guy who booked your parcel made his money. Now as per company policy, I can only deliver it within the town. So I will return it. You don’t worry.’

‘Your company name is DtDC. Door to Door courier. And please listen, my door is at least 15 kilometres away from your office. What kind of service is this? I am recording your conversation and will forward the issue to the courier company headquarters.’

He is very pleased to hear this as if I will do him honours. ‘Please do it. As a franchise I am only following the company policy. If you complain, the booking guy in the other city will be questioned, not me. So please complain.’

I had decided to escalate the issue and force them to deliver the item at my doorstep. But the tractor-cum-discotheque stabs my enthusiasm and I decide to leave the scene and make the most of the time by travelling to the town and pick my document. So there I go riding my two-wheeler.

It’s a swashbuckling new road, a national highway that sucks speed out of even the most lethargic vehicles. Cars, buses and heavy trucks zoom past with hair-raising speed. There are many accidents and many people die but the supreme cause of progress and development swiftly jumps over such minor road-bumps.

This road was a small, peaceful district road during our childhood. There were massive century-old trees on both sides and we recognized distances through huge banyans, peepals, sheesham, mulberries, acacia and eucalypts. Then it was converted into a state highway to be finally changed into a brutally asphalted national highway. The trees vanished. The entire countryside looks changed without those trees.

I ride sullenly trying to spot any tree that I may recognize. Not a single old tree is left. Construction is still going own. The air is foul and plumes of dust hit the helmet screen like tracer bullets. Throughout my life I have seen roads getting built, one after another and still we are short of roads. I think finally roads are all that will be left and we will stay on the roads, always on the move.

I am further beaten in spirits by the time I reach the courier office. It’s a tiny establishment, a single room. An old tauji is cooling his paunch under a water cooler. I introduce myself. He remembers the phone conversation and seems offended at my poor self raising a voice for my right.

‘People are very lazy these days. They cannot move even on vehicles. During our days, we used to walk this kind of distance on foot without cribbing,’ he chastises me.

‘To me, not delivering a service for which you have been paid is cheating,’ I retort.

‘If you want to fight for your right then allow me to send it back,’ he seems very confident of his case.

I mull over it and think it wise to take the parcel. I sign and pick up my article as he looks hostilely.

‘And for your information, the courier name is Desk to Desk not Door to Door,’ he chides me.

‘But uncle my desk is in my house, not here,’ I try a counter punch.

‘Ok, no problem. If you still think that way then let me return it,’ he lunges for the thing in my hand.

I literally run out to save it from his old crooked fingers and forget my helmet at his counter. As I plod back like a defeated old soldier, I can sense that my loss is more than what appears on the surface. Then I realize that the helmet is missing. I sheepishly return to his chamber and ask for my helmet.

‘See, your fight for your rights would have cost you even your helmet,’ he reprimands again.

I rest my case and ride back sullenly, more for the loss of huge majestic trees than the half-baked service.

There is a little crowd by the side of the road. A drunkard has died. His body is put half on the asphalt and half on the roadside.

‘Actually he died there at the end of that field. That field is mine. But we have brought him here to pass it as a death on the road so that his poor family gets some road death compensation,’ a simple farmer informs me.

I move on and recall two drunkard pals in my village. They died in contrasting temperatures. One was left by the drinking group under the open skies in the fields after he passed out. It was a frosty January night and he was found frozen to death next day. The other was left in similar circumstances in a field on a boiling hot June noon and was found baked to death late in the evening.

‘They should have used some sense like these farmers and put them on the road to get something for their poor families,’ I think and move even more sullenly.

As I reach the farmlands outside my village, I see Ranbir trying to maintain his steps by the road. He is drunk most of the time. People call him gunman. Well, he never had a gun in his hand. Actually, his right hand got crushed so severely in an accident—he was a good driver who drank less and drove more to earn a decent living—as to leave a crooked twisted mass that curves to the side of his stomach like a policeman holding his sten gun. People gave him the honorary title of a gunman. Now he drinks more and drives not at all.

One has a special corner in one’s heart for the former classmates. He was my classmate from class first to matriculation at the village school. The soft corner for your classmates with whom you grew up is almost permanent. You smile when you meet them. He laughs and I smile and then turn sad as we move on with him pillion riding on my little two-wheeler.

‘An elephant jumps on its heels to raise unnecessary dust; a lion jumps on its paws to hunt majestically,’ he is saying this loudly. I don’t have any clue to the origins of his exclamations. He repeats it many times till we reach the village. I help him get down at the place of his choice. He waves his hand with a smile as I look back. The vanishing trees, the undelivered parcel and the portable discotheques lose their meaning as I think about his wasted life.

Tuneful Glides of Small Moments

 

Tired, fatigued, pale sunrays kiss the treetops like a very old person blessing a young life with a kiss on the forehead. And the evening twilight arrives with its peaceful delight. It brings a sense of completion, of reaching home, of ripening, of getting into the sunset of joyful old age and happy retirement.

The evening twilight is usually very calm unless we rock the time’s boat with our misadventures or the atmospherics get bored and unleash storms and rains. A tired day retires, leaving the post vacant for some time. And the vacancy brings a kind of delicate naturalism, a sort of assurance that all is well, that the journeys get completed and the destination is likeable after all the trials and tribulations on the path. The trees seem to take a pause as the branches hang silently. This brief zone seems free from the day’s busy humdrum and the night’s eerie depths in the dark.

The twilight is at its best. Then there is a storm. Peace is forever under the risk if you have rhesus monkeys in your locality. They don’t throw just pebbles into the pond of serenity, they catapult big boulders. The pebbles are no match for their raucous spirits. The banana tree in the garden has its first flower, a beautiful big dull maroon cone hanging like a chandelier, the little banana fingers holding a tight fist like a newborn baby, promising a fruitful future. The first flower and the fruit, like first love in the life of humans, is a momentous event in the life of a tree.

When a monkey jumps onto a tree, a criminalized sense of fun is the basic motive. Eating something to survive is far down the list of priority. The beautiful flowers and the tiny fruity fingers are slain. The marauders screech in triumph. I have a suspicion that they have started to think and calculate their nuisance. It’s no longer an instinctual outburst of crazy fun and frolics. I run to the terrace to scare them away. They jump into the yard below and tease me. I come down and they get onto the roof again and shake the trees with extra devilry, staring at me viciously and bombard my ears with their hideous kho kho.

This isn’t mere instinctual behaviour. They have a significant mind but it’s severely unestablished as of now. An unestablished mind is very troublesome. Anyway, the banana tree has lost its first offering to the world. It has been wasted. The only outcome is some fun for the monkeys who seem to draw one more feather from the book of illegalities before it is completely dark. The twilight scampers away in a hurry. One has to learn to live with the monkeys, there is no other way. Of all the species that have been beaten into subjugation by the mankind, the monkeys still have the capacity to impose their will on us.

The potter’s wasp had completed its task on the dining table. It was a very cosy little mud house. It really was. The dry mud is scattered and the tiny infant wasps inside are missing. A monkey did his share of business on the table while I was away for some time. Possibly this is the peanut version of the teatime snacks for the monkeys. He peeled away the mud covering and enjoyed his waspy nuts. One has to accept one’s fate at the hand of the monkeys otherwise the burden of life increases manifold. The wasp, the banana tree and my own self, all three of us stand in acceptance of this fact.

Well, I think the wasp was at fault here, not the monkey. You cannot include the monkeys in the discussion about right and wrong. They will commit a wrong infallibly. So the right or wrong concerns the wasp only. Firstly, he shouldn’t have felt too bold to start grabbing property under the nose of an unknown countryside writer. Arrogance skids away basic precautions. Arrogance, pride and vanity are nothing but ill-fate’s charity. Just because there are many options on a broad plain, we cannot ignore the little corner that is most suitable for us. A potter wasp should have its business below the table, not above it. But if it takes liberty with a struggling writer then let it do at its own risk. Moral of the story is, one should learn to rule out unsuitable things even if they come free. A price not paid now is usually some bigger price paid later.

The day has been good. A potter wasp’s house and the first banana flower and fruit getting undone by the monkeys isn’t too big a loss. I would still consider it as underperformance on their scale of villainy.

It’s basically the male monkeys who plunder the peace in the neighbourhood. The females are too heavily burdened under the duties of raising countless babies. The male monkeys consider senseless mating and endless mischief as their primary duties. And they take it very seriously.

Next day, a stroll in the countryside in the afternoon fetches a few peacock feathers. When you come across a peacock feather during your walks in the solitude, it feels like coming across treasure in the dust. It’s such a beautiful piece of creation. You just bow down to the ultimate colour-master and the designer of things.

The peacock must have danced very happily, a case of requited love I suppose, for there are many feathers. It’s better to have happy and joyful people around because even you may be the recipient of the leftovers of their joy, like I now receive the remnants of the peacock’s joyfulness. There is something marvellous about peacock feathers. We need not go into a discussion about it. All I can say is that if you come across a peacock feather, consider yourself lucky and keep it in your house. You add something substantial to your interior design.

Usually the pause fetched by the forties of age sees me spending my days very meaningfully in my own ways. If I find something missing, a kind of heaviness of life, I pick up some Ruskin Bond book. His writing is so uncomplicated and lucid that life seems a beautiful all goody-goody dream. It heals. You learn how to take things very lightly in easy spirits. Bond Sahab has the divine faculty of spotting only the peaceful and joyful among the apparent chaos of our surroundings. He just filters the nice little things, ignoring the more sophisticated and heavier stuff. And when he presents his filtered version of reality, it takes you into its peaceful folds. You feel relaxed and assured of the still remaining chances of peace. I read a couple of pages of his books at a time, at various stages of the day to keep the light-hearted momentum going on. In between I write, read other authors and manage my chores that are unavoidable on the path of survival. 

The mother cat of the kittens arrived after a month. She had cleverly left them under my step-fatherly care. The cats are far more intelligent than we think. She could very well sense that this lone struggling writer will be a tolerable stepfather, stepmother to be precise, to her kittens even at his worst. She had literally starved herself to death raising these kittens. I am sure she hardly ate anything during those initial days. She would just dump the prey in front of them as they ate almost endlessly. She turned a mere skeleton as a consequence. She kept fasting, eating the bare minimum, till they were grown enough to survive on the milk bowl, grasshoppers, tiny frogs, leeches and crickets in the front courtyard. Then she stopped coming and probably lived for herself.

Today the kittens went out, even the lazy one, can you believe it, for some greener pastures. Their mother sneaked into the empty house as if to check. What a transformation! She has put on healthy weight after eating all for herself for a month. A very dashing Mama cat she looks now. But then this prettiness itself will get her into troubles again as some aspiring cat Pa will seek some brief moments of pleasure, to be followed by months of onerous duties by the Mama cat. It reminds me how weary most of the Mamas are, heavily laden under the duties of raising kids. Hand over some of the kid-rearing duties to the Papas and they will have lesser time for wars, aggression, attacks and noise. The males busy in parenting is a direct boon for mother earth. 

More than normal rains may not be good for a lot many things, especially not the old houses because they get more cracks. More cracks leave the doors hinges a bit out of symmetry. The door latches don’t fit into their sockets as a result. Presently only the bathroom’s latch is working properly—and that’s the most important thing—leaving the rest of the house free for movement. In any case, the locks are only for dogs, cats and birds. And for them even a closed unlocked door is as good as a locked one.

The human beings take locks as simple irritants only, in case they have some unfriendly designs to sneak in. My biggest treasure is my collection of thousands of books. And they are a strict no takeout item for most of the thieves, so that is not a big problem. A person who steals books to read is the sweetest thief in the world and such a person is always welcome, lock or no lock at the doors. Just like the best worm is the bookworm, the best thief is a book thief (the one who steals to read, not to sell them as trash, the latter I would say is the worst thief).

But more rains are definitely good for the tiny sadabahar sapling that has been trying to blossom in the crack of the wall. Here the parameters are totally different. Most of the water slips down. It has a mere crack to survive. For many weeks it did its best to stay alive. It merely stayed alive although new shoots won’t come. It couldn’t laugh but it kept its feeble smile. Then the rains poured more regularly and in the watery abundance, despite all the water slipping down, it still had plenty of water to fulfil its dream of becoming a bigger plant. It now has added a few inches to its height and looks a very happy plant. It can afford a laugh now because it never lost its smile. Hope it will grow tall enough to bear flowers. Well, there is a lesson here. When the things seem the worst, it’s advisable to give one’s best even if it means surviving at the basic minimum level. Then the rains come more regularly and we get rewards for our persistence and patience. 

The frogs have run out of the yard to enjoy bigger, louder show of life. The lads and lasses have to jump higher and croak louder. That’s life. One little frog seems to be inspired by this solitary writer. He still stays indoors. The pitcher has a tripod stand and a few drops fall on the floor. It’s a highly minute leakage somewhere because the rate of the fall of drops isn’t more than two or three in an hour. It leaves a small damp patch on the floor. And there stays the little frog cooling in its small sea.

Everything is about drawing lines to our perception. The tiny baby frog seems contended with its few inches of damp floor and that’s its sea. A couple of drops every hour is its thunder-storming rain. What’s wrong in this if it feels happy this way? Those who are running to swim in the sea of bigger ambitions are within their right to do so. But they can at least stop judging people who are less ambitious and are happy with the less.

A dove pair, freshly in love, tried lovemaking on the sloping, slippery solar panels. They slipped down and almost fell before they took to their wings. Falling in love seems very slippery because the slope is very steep. The emotions are wet and the hormonal storms leave it more precipitous. No wonder many of us slip like the dove pair. It’s better to become loving instead of falling in love. As a loving person you walk better. Good relationships are the normal outcomes in the life of the people who walk on good terrain. Stability has many avenues for smiles. And smiles sow the seeds of love. 

The weird attempt at cooking a mix-veg in an offbeat way has borne good results. I relish the simple supper. There is always a simpler way of doing things. It becomes very easy to do many things if we spare the doing from becoming a tool to appease our ego only. Then we do only the needful. And doing the needful is very simple and uncomplicated. I am enjoying my supper now. A fully drunk farmer is trying his best to break open his own door. The loudest bangs and the foulest abuses hurled at his own family hit the night air like a strident firecracker. His family is hiding inside, fearing a physical assault tonight.

As an addict you turn your own worst enemy, otherwise why would you kick at your own door and try to beat your own wife and children. The monkeys appear far too civilized in comparison to the alcoholic farmers because the simians rarely beat their own kids. They love them so much and wage a continuous war of survival among the human society.

A lone loaf of cloud is flashing light. The rest of the sky is clear and the stars twinkle gently. The lone light-flashing cloud makes it appear as if the victorious rainy army is ceremonially retreating with its last parting shots. The starlit bluish dark distances ogle eagerly. A half moon looks sidelong and pale. A very tired moon it looks. It’s an old moon and shouldn’t mind this age-related fatigue. Didn’t it dazzle brilliantly with its milky light during its youth? It did. The shiny Venus is unperturbed by the cloud’s battery charge. The lightening excitement of the cloud soon gets spent out. It pours out its extra energy and then slowly melts away into the darkness.

The Aromatic Wafts of Some Fluid Moments

 

Some people have exceptional philosophy of life driven by their unique—sometimes seemingly eccentric—beliefs, assumptions and thoughts. Tau Sukhlal was one such farmer. He was a lone mule driving his creaky cart on his very own terrain for a century of lifetime. He was a little bundle of inexhaustible energy. Ploughing the fields forever was his Ikigai, the pair of well-groomed oxen his nearest heart interest in the family, and going to the nearest town on his bicycle even while in his nineties was his passion.

He was once spotted doing push-ups in the privacy of the millet fields. Well, nothing exceptional about the exercise. The feat is mentionable because he was nearing hundred at that time.

He troubled the pitcher of water only once in a day. There was no need to take the trouble again as he drank the entire pitcher in a short interval. Then he worked, worked and worked more. The human system is unique in many ways and we cannot generalize. He had his own diet plan that included a pitcher of water just once in a day.

Further, he rarely spent his nights under the roof even when the weather elements were very testing. He preferred himself over the roof instead of under the roof. In summers the open skies are blissful to sleep on the terrace. For the monsoons and chilly dewy winters he had another roof over his quilt. He covered his charpoy under a polythene sheet and slept to the bombardment of dew, rain, hail and fearsome thunderclaps. In this manner he walked on the path of life for a good hundred years and is primarily known as the one who would eat a big mound of shakkar, powdered jaggery. He was so busy in his little world that whenever I recall him, the image of a human version of the busiest ant on the planet crops up.

Well, coming out of the nostalgia for the local celebs in the past. It’s a damp late evening as I ride a scooty. It’s a countryside unpaved track among the farmlands. The paddy fields are pleading for no more waters. More and more isn’t good. The paddy is over-drunk and has fallen.

On both sides of the rutted path, the grass has grown wild. Travelling across the cropped fields brings to one’s memory such work brutes as tau Sukhlal. His image brings a smile. But the bull frogs are always plotting to effectuate your fall. The twilight has triggered a chorus of crickets and other insects.

The headlamp of the two-wheeler puts the bullfrogs in a jittery mood. One can see a bullfrog sitting by the path from a distance. The sound and light of the approaching vehicle doesn’t break its song or meditation. It but will jump right in front the moment you are about to cross the meditating sage. It seems as if it wants to commit suicide. So here I go with a series of bullfrogs jumping right in front of the little vehicle one after the other.

One in fact mistimes its suicidal dive and lands on my foot. Then the suicide attempts have to wait for a few minutes. A bullfrog is quite big. It appears even bigger if you see it on your foot. I fall down. Luckily not hurt. The culprit triumphantly jumps again and lands into the path-side paddy field. In retaliation I turn suicidal and ride pretty fast. If they don’t jump too close, they are a beautiful sight to watch, however.

The fall has left me cranky and fidgety. I respond, react rather, by skipping dinner—or was it laziness under the garb of spoilt mood—and promise not to read or write during the night. I decide to sulk and do no more of any activity before retiring for the day.

The children in the street have extended their riotous play in the tractor trolley parked at the little square by the house. They have the bulky iron carrier to beat to the limits of their fancies. Shouts, laughter and tonking at the sides and floor of the trolley make bearing up with the noise itself a big task. So I cannot say that I am lying idle.

There is a serious matter among the players now. The clattering din has given way to a chatter which graduates to a serious conversation. They are discussing about their weight. A couple of them point out to be in forties on the scale of weight. So they are the big boys in the group.

‘I am 42 kilo,’ one says.

‘I am 46,’ the other counters.

‘But you are 14 years, I am only 13. Even with your extra year and more weight I gave you more slaps that day.’

‘When?’

‘When you felled me from my cycle.’

‘Where?’

‘Near Jiten’s house whose windowpane was broken by Nittu.’

‘Yea, I remember, you hit first after getting up but after that I gave you at least 15 on your face.’

‘I remember that I gave you a slap everywhere on your face. If I add the ones on the sides of your head and at the back of neck I must have given at least 16.’

Then they pushed each other and began on the second league of the slapping game. No malice involved. The smaller kids danced around and the slappers returned to their houses with much flushed red faces. I believe their slapping game will further continue on the next day.

I still carry the heat of the bullfrog-inflicted fall and decide to chill out with a cold bucket bath. It’s blissful. Water not only cleans you, it heals the mental scars also. I feel light as I put the nice soft towel to wipe the body. I have regained my poise and smile. I am but again on fire after the cool bath. The fiery red ants in one’s towel can quickly put you on fire. The skin literally burns. Well, some days are there just to test you at many fronts. I scrub myself vigorously to make mincemeat of the tiny culprits. It’s then a very prolonged bath with a sullen, brooding, frowning demeanour.

If you feel sad and lonely, go out and open your heart to the open skies. ‘A lone man is the neighbour of God,’ says an Afghan saying. I go on the terrace and open myself to the darkish blue stillness of the night sky. The stars twinkle gently in the clear sky. There is a solitary little loaf of cloud in the sky surrounded by the starry applauds around it. The starlit bluish darkness pervades around the little speck of existence. This little fluff of cloud seems like a small piece taken off from a huge cotton bale. It stays there in the clam sky for an hour or so and then calmly melts away into the shapeless darkness.

I have my smile back. The night sky heals you if you are receptive to its mysterious treatment. You just have to look and smile. The rest of it is taken care by the starry immensity.

The younger Parijat tree in the corner of the courtyard has started to make nights sweeter with its night blossoms. These nigh flowers have the beacon of hope and light for the hearts that need it.

If during the solitary nights, you want to overcome the little tumbles that you faced during the day, I recommend a good Iranian movie. They are gentle and soft lullabies for the bruised self. You float on a misty breeze. There is sweet sadness in the tiny episodes in the lives of ordinary people. I watch ‘The Taste of Cherry’. A terribly unhappy and lonely man has lost his spirits and gusto for life and is thinking of committing suicide. An old man comes his way and tells the forlorn man that he too faced a similar situation once in life and went to a mulberry tree to hang himself with a rope there. Just that the mulberry wasn’t cooperative to his plan and offered him a sweet mulberry. The suffering man ate the sweet mulberry and it instantly took away all the bitterness of life. The suicide-seeking man also tastes a sweet cherry and its sweetness is sufficient to help him regain his faith in life. The sweetness of a little mulberry or a cherry sustains one through the darkest hour of one’s soul and then hands us over to the prospects of a sunny dawn. The sun smiles fresh and we get up and smile in return. Don’t ignore the little sweet mulberries and cherries in your life. They will sustain you even if the world falls apart around you.

The cherry-sweetened night is beautiful. The bullfrog-inflicted falls and the fiery red ants driven fires lose their meaning. The sweetness hands me over to another Iranian movie ‘The Song of Sparrows’. The soft charms of this little world carry me deep into the folds of night. An ostrich farm manager fails to capture an escaping bird and is fired. He has a smiling daughter who needs a hearing aid. Desperately in need of money, he slogs around Tehran for sustenance. He piles up a huge junkyard in his garden. He has taken it too seriously and turns quarrelsome, snappy and cranky. His children try to help him in adding to his earnings but his pride is wounded. He wants to do it all by himself. Good principles and need pull him both ways as he loiters around among an assortment of temporary jobs. He starts gathering the discarded household items, as if in panic, and consequently finds himself perched upon the heap of his junk. Sadly, the mound of his crazy collection crashes, breaking his bone. Then his children and the villagers come together to cooperate and help him through the rough patch. On his bed he learns to appreciate the song of the sparrows that he never had time to listen in life. His little son works with his friends in a wealthy man’s garden to earn hundreds of herrings which they plan to breed in the water reservoir they have cleaned in their fields. They have done well and are taking the herrings in a big basket of water. The basket breaks and they lose their herrings to the water drainage. The boy saves a couple of herrings in a poly bag full of water. They are crying over their loss. But the sight of the two herrings swimming in their water regains their smiles. They have lost hundreds of fish but the loss of those hundreds has given them at least two herrings.

Beyond one’s individual miseries, it’s the song of life that matters. The loud, piercing din of survival becomes tolerable if you have the ears for the soft sparrow songs. It’s not about how much we store. It’s basically about properly using what we have. Life is not even about how much we lose. Even losses have something to offer. Life is basically about wisely using what is left to us after the falls. It is also about nurturing a habit to smile over all the petty irritants of life.

These are beautiful movies and I smile and look into the night sky. If you need company and guidance while stumbling over life’s irritants seek it and ask openly. A book is there, a movie is there, or some other program or people whom you think capable of helping you regain your smile. Don’t be a loner. There is always company in one form or the other. Open yourself to it. You gain from it, believe me. You sleep peacefully in the dark then and welcome a new day with a smile.

A Nurturer of Small-time Liberality

 

I vividly remember a full moon night in the lower Himalayan hills. Some moments have deeper roots in our memory. A full moon brightly smiles through a gap in the chir pine forest. It looks like a bright lamp with milky light. The crickets and other insects jingle as the foot-soldiers of the night and the mountain wind sweetly sighs among the pine needles to raise a signature tune of Mother Nature’s unbound hilarity. The moonlight filters through the pine needles and showers me with a fine drizzle of light as I stand under the whistling, moaning pines and look into the sky.

My memory is redolent with those solitary walks in the early morning forest. In early October the hills have many wild flowers. They smile in the solitary corners and greet you as you pass unhurriedly. The light purple of delicate Four-o'-clock flowers smiles by a little stream accosting me to stop for a few moments. These small wild flowers lie in unwearied wait for some solitary walker to arrive by the overgrown footpath circuiting around the hills.

The fragrant flowers affectionately named Old Man's Beard deck up the hillside like a shy mountain lass to gift their rare smile to anyone who loves walking all alone on the unbeaten paths. It’s basically a non-predatory creeper-cum-bush that moves up with the support of the host tree. Its hold on the host isn’t too demanding. It needs a kind of support only. The malodorous white spikes of the bulbous flowers dangle as a beautiful tree decoration on the hillside. Here the fragrant, flowering creeper is hosted by a Beleric tree (Baheda). In the dew-crowned morning wilderness, they turn the fresh air scented to the intoxicating limits for many meters around the tree. The rising mist carries the lovely smell to me as I slowly come across the bend and see the white smiles at a distance. 

Keep your eyes on the ground and you receive the smiles of the purple blue of Ivy-leafed morning glory. Their tiny smiles among the dew-laden grass ask you to take a pause and stand for a while or maybe even sit down and absorb the solitude to the limits. These wild flowers are the gifts of wilderness for anyone who has the time and inclination to go down the bylanes that aren’t trampled under the wheels of development.  

And when the sunrays arrive to kiss the morning mists of a little valley, the wild fragrance of life and living blossoms up suddenly. It’s intoxicating to the thirsty soul. The highest high that no other substance can give!

Some real-life moments are better than even the beautiful-most dreams. Maybe the reality drives our dreams or possibly even the dreams shape our realities. Beautiful people in your life have the capacity to change your reality to the extent of a still more beautiful dream. My friend Rohtash stayed in the hills and smiled a lot. Just staying in the hills gave his life a satisfactory meaning. His kind heart was never short of feelings that would enable him to share his little paradise with his friends. He felt the immensity of nature around and had literally become a free agent who helped people take their share of the natural booty. He knew my solitary loiterer’s ways and felt at his happiest best in hosting my stays in the hills. He sustained a system that allowed me the best moments of solitary stays in the hills. Thank you so much brother! Then he left us suddenly. All of us have our share of Covid-time losses. We lost him. Death seems too cruel in some cases. She was too hasty. Now in the plains, I have such vivid dreams of those beautiful days. If you have teary smile of gratitude and love for someone who has completed his journey, like I have now for him, that is the hallmark of a life well lived. Stay in peace my friend, my brother!

Reality shakes us out of our slumberous, cosy dreams. I am roused now by a loud barrage of firecrackers. It sounds as if the locality is under a fierce assault. They are the children celebrating Diwali during the day, a full month in advance.

Alcoholism has almost chucked out the prospects of two families in the neighbourhood. Unbridled quarrels and intra-family cruelty make it both nightmare and daymare with equal lethality. The women have grown hysteric and shrill and the children have lost their smiles—they snigger profusely—as the menfolk behave at their worst after losing control to the cheap liquor.

However, a road passing the farmlands around the village has brought back at least the children’s smiles. Their land is acquired by the road department and the reimbursement has aggravated the agonies and ecstasies both. The men drink more, shout more and have the extra push to turn the quarrels all-night affairs now. They probably sleep through the day to recuperate for the night duty.

The children have taken up the responsibility during the day. Diwali is more than a month away but now they have money to go fire-cracking throughout the day almost nonstop. They prefer the loudest crackers that would perhaps even break someone’s wall some day. After the bone-shaking bust and boom, they cackle with loud peals of laughter. Their childhood hasn’t blossomed. They hardly had enough pocket money to celebrate the festivals. Now when there is money they are celebrating full throttle, making up for the lost fancies of childhood, perhaps. Their riotous firecrackers test the capacity of eardrums though. But at least the monkeys have run away for the time being. They must be thinking that they are under attack by the human army of children.

Well, it’s advisable to bear up with anything for the sake of scaring away the chronically nagging simians. It’s another matter that more bottles of liquor and more packets of firecrackers will burn out the celebration too fast, sizzling across the lifeline of finance. In any case, the fresh arrival of easy money has turned their lives happening in many ways. 

Alcoholism is one of the biggest revenue churners for the government. The alcoholics pay their taxes really well with each and every bottle they purchase. With this big payment they ensure that the government won’t interfere while the evil effects of the addiction take not only a family but the overall society in its grip. It’s a living death for so many households. The liquor holds so many fates in its bottle. 

In a society blasted by the scourge of alcoholism, there are so many daily episodes that fall on the wrong side of the law. A quail is shouting pakadleo-pakadleo-pakadleo—catch-catch-catch—as if urging the police to grasp the wrongdoers. Sturdy clumps of grass, bushes and weeds have filled up the space among the trees and houses in the village during this rainy season. The quail too left the boring countryside and comes here to witness the drama of human life. It has plenty of underbushes to hide after raising the alarm.

Rashe is knocking at the gate. The sound beats the firecrackers in tenacity. I have to run. The gate is too old for his big fists. He is broad, muscular and grins widely. He may use the same spirit to uproot the rickety iron gate. His is a slurred speech as his lower jaw is almost immobile, being hit hard by a horse’s leg as he crawled to play with it as an infant. But the shortcoming of his spittly words is covered by his huge grin. The God has been very lenient with his teething. His majestic set of yellow teeth would bite a horse to death if the animal hits him now.

He was born on a musty evening twilight as his mother was walking home from the agricultural farms. She calmly sat by the countryside dirt road and delivered Rashe to this world without much qualms. It was already pitch dark when a farmer informed the family about the new arrival. Rashe and his mother were taken home in a tonga and were absolutely fine with no issues at all. The horse snorted as the cart lurched on the dirt road. This was the same horse that would give Rashe a distinct speech after a year or so.

Presently, he has borrowed a carrier rickshaw for a task that has been proposed to him. During my barn-cleaning spree, the huge, rusted set of chaff-cutting machine stood quite menacingly. It has stood idle for the last decade since Ma stopped keeping a buffalo. A friend has a still operating barn with cattle. The chaff-cutter would give a better look there, thinking so I sought Rashe’s services to carry the rusted iron behemoth and deliver my gift at my friend’s place. But Rashe doesn’t work for money. He works for the cheap native liquor. Give him the money that would fetch him ten bottles of imported English liquor and he will frown and give an expression as if he has been exploited to the limits possible. Give him a single bottle of desi daroo and he grins happily to the capacity of his copious mouth.

I find it advisable to make him joyful on the spot. This much practicality I have learnt on the path of survival in this world. He rolls over the cheap bottle with care and consideration befitting a million-dollar item and mindfully puts it in his cloth bag. Being so happy now, the weight of the heavy iron instrument has no meaning. I just have to watch from a safe distance. The dismembered parts of the machine are tamed and convey their goodbye from the lurching rickshaw carrier as he moves away. One more thing, he never walks in a hurry. Even if there is fire in the village, he would be the last one to come out at his natural easy pace.

There is a ceasefire among the fire-cracking armies for the last couple of hours. The monkeys take the opportunity to flit around the dangerous fronts. But their spirits seem to have been sodden with water. Two adolescent rascals, the rowdiest in the group who spend most of their time cable-walking, have got grounded. The perch on a cable isn’t advisable if there are blasts around. They may lose balance and the red bum may turn redder as a consequence. The two partners in many a crime are sitting sullen under the neem tree in front of a house. A sad monkey looks even funnier. They are so dejected and disheartened as not to mind even a lad kind of rapidly growing puppy joining their company. The puppy is careful and avoids barking. Possibly he remembers the slaps the monkeys give to his species at regular intervals. He stands a few feet away and respectfully wags his tail with a look of compliance. The unrelenting firecrackers have stabbed the simian spirits quite deeply. They look the other way. The puppy comes nearer, hesitatingly, wagging its tail in full acknowledgement of their superiority. They allow it to stand near them and don’t hold its ear or pull its tail or slap it. Well-behaved monkeys, what is this world coming to!? I hope the earth won’t crash out of its orbit today.

There is something wrong with the climate now. There have been plenty of rains till September end but the musty heat is so vehement in its intensity as to beat even the hot months of June and July. One feels like being thrown into a cauldron of boiling water. Well, we have to do something and avoid being boiled alive on earth. I think now is the time to take tree plantation very seriously. We can’t just expect the government to do all the work. Individually we have to take our little steps to undo the common crimes we have committed against Mother Nature as a species.

If we plant a few trees and see them to maturity, I think we undo a portion of our individual carbon footprint. During the rainy season, many trees have their baby sprouts around them. I carefully pick out some of them and groom them in nursery bags. Once they grow to be lads and lasses after regular care, I plant them to grow to be gentlemen trees and ladies in the fallow land around the village. Many of them are eaten by the goats and buffalos. That is painful. But a few have grown to give shade on the ground and nesting to birds among their branches. And that takes away all the pain. Please plant trees and ensure that they survive to give shade, fruit and nesting space to the birds.