The
spring is slim, a little crack in the windows when the bigger doors close and
open between winters and summers. It’s a little blossoming phase between late
winters and early summer. The temperature is already nearing 40°C
in the second half of March. The small trees of neem, guava, parijat, karipatta, belpatra in our little yard are shedding leaves in panic. It’s a
continuous crinkly downpour of leaves. They are avoiding loss of water because
of transpiration by shedding their leaves. Dry golden-brown leaves make a loud
rustling sound. It’s autumnal in spirit, just that temperature is increasing
every day instead of falling like in autumn. But the keekars outside the yard wall are still in spring. A hardwood of
arid regions they aren’t bothered about leaf-shedding. With each gust of wind,
there is no harvest of dead leaves on the ground under them. One can feel a kind
of desolation, slim weariness, a lithe tension as the sun turns hotter each
day. The trees hardly think twice before shedding the extra stuff because it
would extract bigger costs if not cast away.
Beyond
the talks of increasing temperatures, in the month of March the birds are extra
chatty carrying the songs of procreation. They sing a startling preface to resurrection
of spirits. It turns a pleasantly noisy world before the onset of hot, pining
summer. A male Indian Robin, for example, made such a rippling ruckus that it
beat the purple sunbird in excitement and verve of quizzical notes. Despite all
the man-born sufferings around, which we unleash with our anarchist zeal and
principled arguments, the birds sound like they carry spectacular revival of
spirits. But maybe they are congratulating the sparrows on the World Sparrow
Day (March 20).
In a
turbulent and notorious world, caught in the shadows and under the nemesis of
the lofty thrones of powerful villains in leadership positions, the spring
brings a marginal sense of relief to the poetic hearts. In a world shaken by
wars and intrigues, it’s a relief and pleasant surprise to have a spring day
named after little sparrows. As the supreme overlords, the deified faceless
baddies, stretch their despotism to newer and newer heights, holding their
plucky immortality in their razor sharp talons, there is still space left for
the sparrows to make a comeback. About a decade ago, the village skies carried
a strange stillness as the sparrows vanished from the skies. Our moral fulcrum
crumbled to pieces under the hammer strike of our iron-willed, cemented,
plastered steps to create concrete jungles even in the countryside and the sparrows
lost their little holes. It’s a sweet surprise to see them back. Even their
little flocks seem larger-than-life. They are enjoying the bright sunny day; a
lot of chirpy gossips going around. Well, if you are lucky to listen to the
songs of sparrows on the World Sparrow Day, you have reasons to feel gratitude
for this nice little gift.
In
lightening encounter with shimmering designs and colors, a peacock is in full
plume now. He is unambiguously hooting his gospel of love. His fan-tail is
spread laudably and the excited shake of passion shimmers and resonates through
the colorful tangle of exotic designs. We have the king and his harem
comprising three pea-hens. He is dancing on the terrace and they, giving
respecting and revering looks, seem spellbound by his precious talent. Since
the start of creation, the game of love, camouflaging as a gentler version of
lust, pulling the enduring significance of propagation and evolution of
species, has been the chief driver on the chariot of time. We can hardly comprehend
the natural code of unrelenting innovation deceptively embedded in each and
every ounce of space around us. The peacock gives a riotous shake of colors
with love, lust and procreative passion.
The cool
windy mornings flirt with warm sunrays. The flowers open themselves with a
spirit of religious offering. Fragile petunias show a seminal spirit—red,
violet and bi-colored (white and red; red and pink).
The
nights have cool breeze and a few ducks, which had come to the plains for the winter
stay, take nocturnal flights. Their soul-force guiding their need-based journeys
back to some Himalayan lake, away from the abhorrent turmoil of the plains. They
quack a ‘bye’. Peacocks and peahens hoot during the nights. During the day they
perch upon the highest points on rooftops and look around as if lost in grander
assumptions than the rest of the birds.
The
few pairs of doves in the locality love being foolish. They are not to be
impressed by the arrogantly styled stateliness of the weaverbird nests. They
are contended with the same old house that has seen many tragedies in the past,
the very same little, fragile nest that has become the common breeding point of
the dove community. When unoccupied it seems a sublime memorial of a species’
looming extinction. The bird of peace looks in shock and awe of the human
juggernaut. Caught in the dreadful constellation of unquenchable human desires,
they seem to have given up and fulfill the formality of laying eggs in the same
famished nest. From our standpoint I would call them most careless of birds.
One can see the eggs just couple of feet overhead through the see-through nest.
As if hurriedly saying adieu they lay eggs in the same nest one after the
other. I haven’t seen even a single successful hatching out of dozens of eggs
laid in the little clump of trees in my yard over the years.
The
handsome oriental magpie robin that sleeps among the parijat branches at nights went for a nighttime dinner. The
washroom in a corner in the yard invited him with its bright bulb. The bulb
shone with its appetizing flair of mosquitoes and moths around it. The dashing,
dainty guy sneaked in and ate to its contentment. However, it became greedy. At
last, I had to put off the light unless the problem of plenty gave it
gastronomical effects. In this way the tempo for the summers is building up and
just a few weeks down the line the scorching, burning north Indian summer
awaits with a baking glee.
The
visiting rufous treepie is heckling with the native birds, maybe reprimanding
them before starting for the journey back to some little wooded valley in the
Himalayan foothills.
A
sowthistle has touched the prime of its species. With an ecumenical spirit it
has grown to a height of above six feet. Blinded by the exacting smokescreen of
our greed-based models of development, we may have categorized it as a weed,
but it’s as lovely and likeable to mother nature as any other plant of great
utility to we humans. I have allowed it to grow among the marigolds. The
marigolds have dried out, after a heady assertion of their blossoming spirit
during the coldest weeks of January and February, leaving little saplings
growing under the dead skeletal stalks of their parents. Among them blossoms
the tall sowthistle, an expression of mother earth’s untamed spirit of
wilderness which we humans, with our vilified and misguided bravery, have been
trying to quell with brute force, unleashing a downward spiral of nature,
decimating ecosystems.
The
sowthistle carries the charm of wilderness. It belongs to dandelion tribe in
the sunflower family and its flowers look like miniature sunflowers. Just
because the bigger sunflowers give us oil we define them as useful, while these
little blooms don’t fit in our utilitarian plans, at least not till now, so they
are just unwanted weeds for us. But in a world defined by man-made ethical
tenets, when everything bottom-up from the ground dust to the planets above is
eyed with a hardcore intent to extract useable juice, as a sort of ugly
assertion of our right to rule the planet and still beyond, when the spring has
been ostracized to few little wild blooms in patches of land somehow beyond our
direct manipulation, these tiny smiles are specially significant. These little
yellow flower-heads, of the size of a button (half to one inch in diameter)
greet me with the comparable resonance of those times when our earth had real
springs. They are not as useless as one may think. Sowthistle derives its name
from old times when it was fed to lactating sows to increase milk production. Now,
these little yellow flowers with frills around the edges carry the banner of
spring in my little garden.
And
the humans, in their glamorous villainy and manipulating fantasy, convulse with
festive spirit on Holi, Vasant Kama Mahotsva. The farmers have
their own version of Holi fun. It’s
pretty rowdy and riotous to the extent that a city gentleman would surely
recoil in horror if he witnesses it. This is the day when patriarchy is razed
and attacked by the female warriors. The male elitism gets a day off and the
females pommel the male backs, bums and legs with cords made of their head-clothes
twisted around to give the sting and strength of a thick rope. Some of them
even secretly interweave a wire inside the twisted cloth-cord and unleash all
the pent-up vengeance pooled through the year. Its effect is evidenced by blue
welts on the backs and bums of drunken farmers which they proudly carry for
weeks after the festival. The menfolk pour anything ranging from street muck to
fresh and stale buffalo dung all over the women. It starts with fun, progresses
to shouts and changes to drunken brawls, squabblings and plain fights as the evening
builds up. One of the drunken men poured deep dark oil on the tailless male cat
to turn it into a hilarious mini tailless jaguar. I think the poor fellow has
lost even the last chance of wooing any of the cat girls unless one of them has
very sadist sense of taste for choosing a partner.
The
sullen petunia—that remained flowerless among a riot of colors on its brethren
around—decides to celebrate Holi. It
smiles with four flowers, four beautiful binary flowers having soft pink and
milky white strips alternately designed across its frilled trumpet-shaped
blooms. The handsome magpie robin is letting out a cascade of colorful notes as
if celebrating the lynching of males for a change on the occasion. It’s a
fantastic mimicker. In tune with the Holi-time
fun and frolics on the ground, it’s mimicking the rapidly chipping notes of the
purple sunbird. After all it’s a special occasion. There are colors in life. I
have seen it alone during late winters. Now there is a lady in his life. It’s
happy and goes for a fun-filled, excited, ecstatic hopping flight over the unruly
fun unfolding in the streets below. It goes up and down and jumps from tree to
tree. Meanwhile, his girlfriend looks pretty impressed from a branch. He indeed
looks very happy to have found love in the spring after lonely winter nights.
In
the late evening, the Holi show
culminates with the aftermaths of a misunderstanding between two drunkards. One
of them is lying like a log in the street. The other is busy in unleashing the
fury of a hard kolda all over the
fallen Holi-celebrator’s body. He is
a strong lad and gives big, powerful strikes. His tongue gives suitable company
to his hands as it raises a massive tornado of choicest abuses, cuss words and
expletives in Haryanvi language. Their slippers are lying nearby. A lady dog
thinks it better to at least put out the prospects of the footwear becoming a
part of this war. She picks them up and puts them in front of a particular
house. The peasant woman offers her buttermilk sometimes. Out of gratitude the
cute canine lady looks forward to add to the collection of her patron lady’s footwear.
In fact the temple goers have been complaining about their chappals going missing from the temple gate of late. They now know
where to find their missing footwear. I think this lady dog has taken her job a
wee bit too seriously. But then she doesn’t like anyone else doing her duty. Her
patron had a visitor who left her slippers in front of the gate. The canine
lady felt insulted over this transgression of duties, so she picked up the
articles and put them in the middle of the square nearby.
