An Ode to Early November

 

Early November is the best part of the year for me. This part of the year is seminally fresh. You can see through the transparent liveliness. The river of time is slowly meandering carrying little buoyant waves. The early winter is so relaxed, playful and carefree in its pre-puberty days.

The roses sway in gentle cool breeze. In salubrious early November, the flowers blossom up fully, open up their self completely, then willingly scatter their petals without pain and suffering. They kiss the ground with as much passion as they blew kisses for the air. Look at them carefully, they greet you and acknowledge your presence with a fragrant smile.

Little pinwheel-shaped Parijat flowers carpet the yard in the morning. The small-sized tree has a distinctive place in Hindu mythology. The holy tree lets loose a fine drizzle of highly fragrant little white flowers as the sun peeks over a dewy, misty morning.

The dew-kissed marigolds are sturdy. They stay for a few days. In garlanded form, they make sporadic forays into mythology.

A skink crawls slipperily on the floor, sneaks under a flowerpot and bumps into a lizard. Both of them then run for their lives in opposite directions.

The loveliest roses are nourished by dewy nights, balmy sunrays and gentle breeze. I have enough flowers to sustain the little ball of honeybees. They have lost their orchards and gone are big honeycombs, so even a small ball of honeycomb is welcome. It’s better than none at all. The little ball of honeybees must be feeling in a paradise with showers of night-blooming jasmine flowers so nearby. They get busy on a very early breakfast. They are whizzing about amid booze and gossip.

The ground gets carpeted with white flowers under the Parijat. I usually collect them and put them in the flowerbed so that they don’t get trampled. I find it a sin to trample a flower. The flowers then become celebratory lunch for scores of little insects.

The spotted doves and the honeybees are very cordial neighbors. The lazy cat now sleeps under the tree. Most probably, he has seen the nest. I hope the bees will teach him a lesson if he troubles their docile neighbor. Sadly, the doves are very lazy in the nest-making art. It’s a poor, fragile, unkempt, clumsy nest. It’s situated at a perfectly reachable height, making it a treat for any winged or even earthly predator. Looking at their careless, almost foolish ways, I sometimes wonder how do they even survive as a species.

The banana flower cone welcomes all from the sweetest ones like butterflies to the stingiest ones like yellow hornets. Nature doesn’t mind it much because they take only as much as they need. The scarlet cone having nutritious sap is placed on the open platter for all to take their share.

There are earthworms in the garden. They are very near to earth, hence named as such. They are just a bit more conscious earth. The earth that crawls a bit. They crawl, die, decay and become perfect earth very soon.   

These are beautiful days. The dusk descends suddenly. A little group of scaled munias is raising a feeble ruckus—they cannot turn noisy even in their worst mood. A hawk is after one of them. Maybe it’s a young hatchling that is yet to learn the entire set of flying maneuvers or perhaps it’s an old one with tired wings. It dives into a clump of trees, followed by the hawk. I can hear a painful screeching sound. Most probably, it’s a successful hunt or a failed escape.

Camouflaged by the shades of the falling dusk, the lazy cat crawls up the tree very cautiously. The silverbills, tailorbirds and oriental white eyes raise a protest. The dove keeps sitting in its poor nest, believing itself to be invisible. It but flew away at the last moment as the cat easily crept up to the nest. The hungry cat reached the nest and got a crunchy early dinner. The dove kept mum at night but cried through the next day. But it turned silent by the evening. The tragedy was almost scripted beforehand given their lazy and slovenly attempt at nest making. It was destined that the cat would have a breakfast, lunch or dinner any time. Its early foray means that it had a small meal. Had it waited for some days, the food would have been feistier. But then they don’t think like we humans. They live in the present.    

Beyond the mainstream pruning and trimming, it may sound a sidelined, marginalized narrative but it carries its wholesome spiritual trail and healthy cultural pulse. Modern life is stacked from floor to ceiling, pushing us into musty corners of our own creation. The money-spinning fancy footwork, the mad scrambling for supercilious slice barely leaves any shelf space for little innocent smirks, casual banter and childish merry-go-rounds.    

The last journey over laddoos

 

The other day, Balbir ki bahu, a poor woman on the socio-economic hierarchy, died. In patriarchy, you are mostly known as someone’s wife. Very few people know a woman’s real name. She was suffering and prematurely aged beyond her years. But then something rich happened during her last journey. As her arthi passed on the road on the way to the cremation ground, a sweets-laden tempo of a sweet-maker goofed it up. Trays of freshly prepared laddoos went falling in a line along the way. She went floating over the laddoos. Laddoos in place of flowers isn’t a bad bargain. Many dogs felt grateful as they feasted upon the chancy offering.

Before setting her onto the last lag in the journey, i.e., setting fire to the pyre, it was observed that her gold nose-stud was still in her occupation. Her son tried to salvage the last worldly possession but it won’t come off. He pulled very hard but the skin on the old woman’s proud nose stood ground. He had to leave it. Maybe she loved her nose-stud and carried it with her to the other world.

The free-will of the younger generation

 

Dhillu is an agonizingly disciplined man. His life’s show falls under the rubric of ‘what will people say?’ He holds the pole of reputation as he walks on the rope of life. His core ideological moorings keep him safe in the bay beyond controversies and bad name. He is but flabbergasted about the uncaring ways of the current generation. ‘Imagine what the world has come to be. Yesterday I overheard a few boys talking. “You don’t speak! You got slapped for your conduct. It was such a big insult and humiliation. You must be ashamed of it,” said one of them. But the champion replies, “What is insult? This so-called shame, insult or humiliation lasts just two minutes. After that it has no business to be in one’s mind.” Imagine what hard skins for such tender age. With this type of attitude, will anything stop them from crossing any limits?’ He is scandalized and seems very much disturbed. Maybe he realizes that he has led his life in a completely unfit way.

An established mind

 

Rashe fell like a log after drinking too much. He carries a bloody, self-healing scar on his temple. I point it out and he informs me, ‘I have promised myself not to drink anymore.’ ‘When did you make the promise?’ I ask. ‘Yesterday,’ he answers. ‘Should I distribute prasad that Rashe has quit drinking?’ I ask him. ‘Please wait! Even if I quit, others won’t allow me to stand by my decision,’ he says and looks at his friend standing nearby. The promise met its end on the second day and he celebrated the evening in the usual way. ‘But I promise not to fall anymore,’ he said to me the next day.

Rashe is strictly against hoarding anything and would take only as much as it fulfills his requirements at the moment. A meditative present-moment liveliness. Offer him something extra and he says, ‘But there is no need of it.’ Ganja and liquor are an exception though. He would take as much as you offer. I tried to force an extra kitchen stand and a redundant, but in perfect condition, ceiling-high tin tank for wheat storage. Someone in his place would have smartly calculated their resale values and would have happily grabbed the opportunity even if these weren’t needed in his house. But Rashe is beyond such calculations. He rejects the offer because he doesn’t need them. And schemes like taking them and selling aren’t appealing to him. He but carefully inspects two aluminum pots, suspiciously scans them and says his mother will welcome them in her kitchen. The kitchen stand is squarely rejected. I leave it in front of my gate and when I go to check it after fifteen minutes, it’s missing. Someone in need, or even sheer greed, has taken it.

Some moments cocooned in late autumn

 

Like a submissive protagonist in the seasonal play directed by nature, late autumn is handing over the baton to early winter. A rufous treepie, a dweller of the hills and now here for the winter stay, is seen on the gulmohar tree, picking dry ends of the branches to make a nest. Their distinct sound sails over the chirpy songs of the resident species with a palpable dissonance. The migratory couple is exploring a suitable nesting site among a clump of trees in the courtyard of an unoccupied house in the neighborhood. They but see a lot of monkeys in the locality and sensing the dangers born of the simian mischief they abandon the plan. Common sense seems their handmaiden. Ours seems a pale imitation of the unadulterated sense found among the non-human species.

Rockchats are very unassuming and non-pompous birds. A rockchat couple prefers to fly into the verandah to pick ants, spiders and even baby lizards if they are lucky on their menu for the day. They sometimes hop into the room and with an anecdotal perch stare into the dressing table glass with a mysterious clarity and certitude. The couple seems very happy in spending their days hopping and flying in the garden, yard and verandahs. It’s a silent, non-interfering bird. It’s nice to have them around. Both of them somehow add to the silence and solitude around me.

Even early winter has soaring daytime temperature. You can feel the heat. But the putative votaries of superstardom, the lethal shenanigans, the perpetrators of ideological excesses are busy in building hypersonic missiles. China is desperately scavenging for superpower status. They are taking panga with everyone around. It looks a myopic venture. I think they have preponed their jump onto the hot seat by a decade. They could have waited for some more time. Amidst all these bleeding-heart clichés, climate change is too common an issue to grab anyone’s attention. So the planet keeps smoldering.  

But still as an ode to the autumn, dry neem leaves drizzle down carrying the nostalgic nuances of better times when autumns were real autumns, not just in name like now. What is a dry neem leaf by the way? It’s but a bit naughty dust that rustles and rollers over; a kind of bit of earth flying for some fun. While, a flying bird is almost a visible representative of air.

In the curry patta leaves, there is a tiny ball of honeybees and near it a nest of spotted doves. It’s a peaceful and patient couple. They seem to have waited on the sidelines as other bird couples stole the procreative show during the monsoons. They reserved their love for late autumn and now slowly walk onto the stage.

The banana flower cone has oriental white eyes also. It’s a beautiful, tiny, light-green bird with a white ring around their eyes. Beyond the bloodthirsty beats of the human civilization, they are happy taking little sips from the dangling scarlet banana cone. In the mornings, there are beads of dew on the cone and these little birds just love breakfasting upon them.