The Neighborhood Liqor-lover

 

Beyond emotional unleashment on the issue, alcohol mints a lot of revenue for the government. With its firm moorings in history, the liquor industry is progressing really well. Now we have as many liquor-lovers roaming around during the day as we had earlier during the nights. The booze business is going great guns as more and more people lose their spirits. One of the liquor-lovers is determined to turn everyone deaf by playing the loudest music for 18 hours non-stop. Then he fell senseless around midnight. The tortured speakers got a well-deserved rest. But our ears carried the echo still drumming in our ears. And when it would come to an end, he would be back with a louder bang.

The Slow-paced Times

 

As per the theory of relativity, time was slower during our growing up years. It left much time at the villagers’ disposal to while it away in chaupal gossips and idle talks over hookah and cards. Grandfather loved mathematics. Since almonds strengthen the brain, from where the sprouts of mathematics originate, he loved almonds as well. So we siblings would break almond shells in the open yard in front of our house. In a bucolic world thirsty for happenings, it presented an interesting episode. The neighbors would creep out and sit around. They counted the number of almond shells broken. Then all of them had interesting bits of information to share about the best way to hit to break the shell cleanly. Just imagine the amount of time at our disposal during those years.

A Coin's Sticking Warmth

 

Those were diminutive, sleepy times in the eighties of our childhood during the last century. Now after almost four decades, little-little memories peek over gentle facades. I must be eight or nine. I was walking by the pot-holed district road on the way to our fields about a kilometer and half from the village. The little tales in schoolbooks with their moral lessons, at least during those times, laid a complex and experiential field to test the lessons.

I was also put into a predicament. I found a fifty-paisa coin. My brisk pacing got slowed down. I had to avoid moral bankruptcy. A fifty-paisa coin carried enough weight till that time. It would fetch ten sugar candies or even fifty little buttons of candies that came one for a paisa. I carried it in my firm, warm, moist, tight fist. Candies would make the day of any child any day in any age. I hope they still carry the same charm.

Still it wasn’t my money. I knew by rote learning that one should be honest and should try to return the lost money to the owner. I saw a group of girls cutting wood by the road and instantly the opportunity to clear my conscience arose. ‘Has anyone of you lost a fifty-paisa coin?’ I asked them. I was expecting a no but one of them said yes. It dumped my spirits. The coin seemed to be glued to my palm. ‘Tell me where did you lose it?’ I raised the level of my enquiry. She was a very intelligent girl. ‘Anywhere between that point and the village school on the road,’ she swiped her little axe along the road to cover two kilometers of stretch. Under the spell of mouth-watering candies, morals can be stretched. I elongated my next query along the lengthened morals. ‘Tell me the year on it,’ I asked. To clear my conscience she had to fail in the test. She hazarded a guess that came to be wrong. So there I carried my coin with a clear conscience and in full honesty.

Tau Hoshiyar Singh

 

Tau Hoshiyar Singh is in his nineties now and is almost deaf and nearly blind. ‘Tau, can you recognize me?’ I ask him. ‘Yes,’ he says, trying to sound confident, his mind already working on the problem. ‘Then tell, who am I?’ I put up the teaser. ‘Pappu,’ he says. ‘See, you cannot see at all,’ I try to make him confess that he cannot see. ‘Yea, I meant to say Suppi’s brother,’ he hasn’t lost the confidence in the least. Does he mean to say I’m my own brother or he has recognized me as my brother? ‘But you said Pappu,’ I try to make him flinch from his firm perch. ‘Yea, It’s the same,’ he says coolly.  

The Many Versions of My Nickname

 

My Sufism-loving father gave me the nickname of Sufi. But the bucolic tongues twist it to Suppi, Scoopi, Soopi and scores of many other rustic derivates. There are just three or four people in the village who can pronounce my name properly. Tau Surje thought I was Sukhi Ram, so called me Sookhi. Then there were a few old taus who called me Subbi.