The banjara baby

 

A small town hospital run by a doctor couple. He a physician and surgeon, she a gynecologist. Nice doctors who won’t dab into your pockets with unnecessary tests. Almost like a state transport services bus—big, slightly disordered, bustling with lower-middle class people. A hospital for medication and service, not a five-star level swanky set-up to take the treatment costs into many lakhs of rupees. The long rectangular entrance hall had a reception desk and chairs and benches for the waiting OPD patients. It would be usually full due to the affordable services and ethical code of conduct followed by the doctor couple.

This day a banjara woman is in for delivery. Dauntingly clad gypsy women are huddled in a corner, sitting on the ground. Then the elderly banjara patriarch comes lumbering along the dim-lit corridor. He is an imposing figure with great moustache, big red head-cloth, slim-fitted white vest, heavy knee-length dhoti and massive leather jutis, which creak to announce his arrival from the delivery section. His stick stomping on the cement floor. His voice boomerangs across the hallway reaching the ladies huddled in the corner, ‘Chhoro hoyo se paanch kilo ka!’ It’s a boy weighing five kilogram. Well, everyone seems weighed down by the heavy announcement.

Fathers and sons

 

Jat fathers and sons would share a most formal relationship. The son kept his head low, spoke in monosyllables, got up to leave the group when his father arrived, and always expected verbal and hand and leg lashings. They stayed like almost strangers under the same roof. When the equations reversed in the old age, the son stamped his authority as an autocrat and the deposed king would need to call ceasefire, smoke hookah, eat rotis in silence and while away his time in the community chaupal.

The same was the equation between Father and Grandfather. They had their own views of running the household, spending, eating, everything in fact. But now Grandfather being in his nineties, Father was at the peak of power. Grandfather usually minded his business. But sometimes, while Father was in office, he would try to regain his lost territory and we would revolt. Usually the matter reached Father’s court after his return. We were always assured of victory there. So one night when Grandfather’s case had been summarily disposed, he felt crestfallen and angrily declared, ‘I’ll ensure that I become a ghost and make troubles for you all!’ he admonished Father. Father lost it. ‘Imagine, he is nearly hundred and still talks of becoming a ghost. That’s no option for you!’ he laughed.

The village of our childhood

 

When we were growing up, the village had plenty of bullock carts. Cattle, buffalo and bulls still pulled the cart of farming. Tractors had just started to come onto the scene. Carts, driven by male buffalos and bulls, had their unique means of shifting gears to increase the speed. Imagine the farmer and the bull both falling into a lethargy, the carter almost dozing with sleep and the bull going very slowly in the rut of the track while chewing cud. Fully relaxed. Then the farmer suddenly realized the passivity. Then he would shift gears. It involved holding the cart-puller’s tail, giving it a jerk, simultaneously his heel hitting the bull’s balls, and the tongue giving a loud clucking sound. All done in perfect synchronism. The bull would be jolted out of its laziness.

So we would imitate clucking our tongues like seasoned farmers. In fact we had tongue-clucking competitions. The atmosphere would resound with clucking sounds. Some chaps would cluck their tongues so loudly that even the bulls tethered in the barns got startled.

My brother took a fancy to be the clucking champion in the village. His practice session would cross over into late evenings when Father arrived from office. The sound has a vehement, egging-on vibes. And who won’t be egged on after a day at the office followed by a commute in a crowded train from Delhi to the nearby town and then a ride in some rag-tag three wheeler plying on the potholed road? So Father reprimanded him very severely after a week. ‘You know what, your tongue will get a fracture with so much striking like flint against your palate!’ Father further admonished. ‘I saw a guy with a fractured tongue. He cannot speak now.’ So my brother had to abandon his practice to become the village clucking champion.

Mother's Day

 

Mother’s Day falls on May 14. Maa left us in January 2020. With Mother gone, one is suddenly less loved, forever. Because who else will love you so selflessly? The space that a mother leaves in one’s heart stays vacant forever. It cannot be filled. Till your mother is around, and even if you yourself are old, you hardly feel that you are old. After all you are still someone’s child and your mother would show the same care like she did when you were small. So how can you feel old?

I keep convincing myself that Mother is now part of everything around me. In her human form she gave me birth, reared me, protected me, nurtured me. She still does the same as Dharti Mata, Mother Earth. So to me Mother’s Day and Earth’s Day are just the same. In her lap I walk, enjoy, shit, pee, cry, laugh, throw tantrums. The very same child of yore.

It pains to see Mother Earth getting older and older, her strength failing to support the errant kids. But She will give her all till She lives. I’m not a power aspirant. I know I cannot handle it. But if ever I’m given some authority I would make cutting the trees without justified permission a punishable offence. I know it’s hardly possible. But this type of daydreaming helps me in imagining a lush green earth at night.

Two-mouthed snake

 

During our childhood there were lots of free sands for the harmless red sand boa (RSB) to lie lazily and be found by the excited, scared eyes of the children. We called it ‘do muh wala saanp’. The village myth went that it had mouths at both ends, that it never bit but if it did on a Tuesday then nobody would survive. The gutsy boys would tentatively hold it in their hands and the chicken hearted like yours truly would stare from a distance.

Then the times changed. The sand was lost. The red sand boas turned rare. Then as per the growing economy even the RSB got an economic tag. It was considered lucky now—maybe due to its rarity. The new myth went that it sells for lakhs of rupees, that rich corporate houses kept it as a lucky charm. So now when a RSB surfaced at a house in the locality, and the unsuspecting children put it in a bucket and left it outside the village, the news busted and the entire locality went searching among the bushes for the big prize. Luckily the RSB had crawled to safety in the meantime. The children were severally reprimanded for harming the family’s economic interests.