The Smile is Back

 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, going to the nearest town on his bicycle even while in his nineties was his passion. He was once spotted doing pushups 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. 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 testy. He preferred 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 thunderclaps. 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. He was so busy in his little world that even when I recall him the image of a human version of the busiest ant on the planet crops up.

It’s a damp late evening as I go on 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 overdrunk 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 a 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 bull frogs jumping right in front of the little vehicle one after the other. One in fact mistimed its suicidal dive and landed on my foot. Then the suicide attempts had to wait for a few minutes. A bull frog 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 pathside 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 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 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 Kg,’ 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 window pane 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 pretty much flushed red faces. I believe their slapping game will further continue.

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 look.

If you feel sad and lonely go out and open your heart to the open skies. ‘A lone man is the neighbor 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 on the clam sky for an hour or so and then calmly melts away into the shapeless dark. 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’s taken care by the starry immensity. The younger Parijat tree in the corner of the front yard 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 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. He thrashes 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. And there he is perched on the heap of his junk. The mound of his crazy collection crashes, breaking his bone. Then his children and the villagers come together to cooperate and help them 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 a 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 the miseries of life, it’s the song 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 what is left to us after the falls and 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. 

Simple Ways to Common Joys of Life

 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 of milky light. The crickets and other insects jingle as the foot-soldiers of the night and the mountain wind drums the pine needles to raise a signature tone 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 of Old Man's Beard deck up the hillside like a shy mountain lass to gift their rare smile at 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. The flowering creeper is hosted by a Beleric tree (Baheda). In the dew-crowned morning wilderness, they turn the morning 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 for the thirsty soul. The highest high that no other substance can give!

Some real life moments are better than even the beautiful most dreams. May be 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 round and had literally become a free agent who helped people take their share of the natural booty. He knew my solitary loiterer 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, cozy dreams. I am roused now by a loud barrage of firecrackers. It sounds as if the locality is under assault. They are the children celebrating Diwali during the day a full month in advance.

Alcoholism had almost chucked out the prospects of two families in the locality. Quarrels and intra-family cruelty made it both nightmare and daymare with equal lethality. The women grew hysteric and shrill and the children lost their smiles—they sniggered—as the menfolk behaved at their worst after losing control to the cheap spirits. But 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 they have now 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 simians. It’s another matter however 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 as the evil effects of the addiction take not only the 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 government to grasp the wrongdoers. 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 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 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 it lurched on the dirt road. This was the same horse that would give Rashe a distinct speech after a year or so.

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 cutter machine stood quite menacingly. It 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 to deliver my gift. 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 firecracking 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 even mind a lad kind of rapidly growing puppy. 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 shakes its 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 tree gents 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 shades on 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. 

Rich life of a poor pause

 Clouds float like huge cotton bales in a blue sea. They bear a tired look as they move westwards. They should be as the rainy season has been quite busy one for the clouds. The skies now get back their metallic birds after a hiatus of one and half years due to the multiple waves of the pandemic. The frequency of aircrafts is increasing. They look like another species of birds flying higher. Below them, the scavenging black kites have started to fly in the village sky quite frequently, a clear sign of the prowling urbanization. Nothing wrong with the change, it’s inevitable. We can but have better waste management and more trees for the kites to look for natural preys instead of hawking over the stinking waste of humanity.

A dragonfly is resting on the pointed end of the spear-shaped grills over the upper border of the garden gate. It’s a beautiful sight. I dare the monkeys to do the same. It’ll give a solid injection on their red bums. They but have better minds than to take their follies to this extent. So they prefer to get injected in this manner. If I had the power to punish them and they possessed the patience and willingness to take it, I would ask them to sit on these spikes.

This is the month of pitra paksha, ancestor worship, when people put ceremonial offerings on their wall tops and roof parapets. It’s believed that one’s ancestors receive the offerings through the birds, especially the crows. Now there aren’t many crows left here in the village. Only the monkeys and Homo sapiens are adding to their numbers. A few dozens of the crows are taking burps of kheer, halwa, malpua and puris. Looking at the quantity of the food on offer, the crows can, at the most, taste it. And just tasting it leaves them full to their neck. Being overfed, the crows look sleepy in fact. The major portion of the food is then taken by the monkeys on behalf of the ancestors. With this rich extra diet I expect more and more monkeys mamas carrying even more monkey babies.   

I am fed up with monkeys. I need diversion, something than can If you are fed umake me forget the simian-driven misery. I watch some Iranian movies. If you are fed up with the typical larger than life unreal song and drama romance of the Bollywood try some Iranian movies. They are so simple and small time that they pierce truth like anything. They sound like a countryside trill of bell, a little hymn, pious and pure. Majid Majidi is a master storyteller on the screen. His ‘Children of Heaven’ is Himalayan in emotions, even though it’s a tiny budget story, primarily concerning a little pair of brother and sister. It’s not a fight for billions or the best looking girl around. The family has extremely limited means and the brother sister duo have to share the same pair of sneakers to go to their schools. They are always running to help each other reach the school in time. The nine-year-old boy then runs a 4 Km race to win a pair of shoes for his little sister. To win the shoes he has to lose the race to two runners. The shoes are for the third winner. The first and second positions carry far more lucrative rewards. But these better rewards have no meaning for the boy. Our best is what we need. Beyond that it’s a pathetic tale of greed. He fights for the third position to get shoes for his sister. The first and second positions are as bad as the last position in the race. That’s the beauty of pure hearts. They indeed are children of heaven. Our children have such a rich potential for purity, innocence and unconditional love. It’s a pity that we allow it to dissipate as they grow old. This has been the biggest unharnessed resource on the earth. This I think is our biggest misfortune and collective failure.

The other movie that brought tears of gratitude, joy, smiling sadness and understanding is named ‘Baran’. It’s the story of sublime love, a love that isn’t looking for completion in the form of marriage or getting the person as we usually perceive it. A simple, bucolic construction site laborer falls in love with an Afghan refugee girl. She initially worked as a laborer on the same site. She had to disguise herself as a boy because the female refugees aren’t allowed to work in the foreign country. Well, he gives everything away to see a smile on her face, gives away his entire savings, sells his citizen identity in the black market and turns a stateless citizen. He can’t buy her costly gifts but he gives a pair of crutches to her father who has broken his leg. He offers all he has on the altar of his emotion. He has to see a smile on her face before she leaves Iran for her home country Afghanistan. She gives him a faint smile, a smile so precious given her inexplicably horrid pain and pathos. She drops her burka, loses her identity as the truck moves away, perhaps forever. When you give all you have for your emotion, you won’t feel a loser. You hardly carry any guilt. And a guiltless conscience will enable you to smile over tears. He has given his all. He isn’t in pain over his offering to pure love as he smiles while looking at the sandal mark in the mud where the girl’s footwear had stuck as she left for her country. Love isn’t a derivative of outcomes in relationships. It’s only about how much depth you enjoyed irrespective of what happened later. The boy and the girl never so much as touched each other’s hands but their smiles at the end of the movie say it all. They could feel love even though they couldn’t act on the feelings of love in the form of a formal relationship.

I have moisture in my eyes as I recall those lovingly haunting scenes in the movie. The fan above is creaking with equal measure in sadness. It is a battered, rusted ceiling fan in the verandah above the dining table whose one corner is reserved for writing. The fan may sound sad but it still is a happy home for somebody. The upward facing plastic cup on the fan’s rod has enough space for an old bat to spend his days. The fan has crooked wings and makes creaky weird noise as it revolves slowly. The bat seems to have fallen in love with this set-up. Initially I tried to rob the bat of its ownership deed on the fan. It was but so damn adamant in retaining its lurching cradle that it flew dangerously close to my face. It gave me enough warning to stop the project midway. A simple, nondescript village writer is no match for an angry bat. The bat is soundly sleeping above as I write this. There is a guava tree in the garden. I am sure he tastes most of the guavas in the night leaving them for me to eat during the day.

I am sharing something which might be disturbing to a few people. I have successfully opened very hardy looking brass locks of famous brands. What is disturbing in that, you may wonder. Well, it definitely raises a few eyebrows if you manage it with a thin screw driver. Before you jump to any conclusions and imagine me going around stealthily in the dark of night, let me clarify I use it when the option of the key is missing.

Once it happened like this. It was a heavy brass lock of a famous brand that had lost its key in the house. With the spectacle of messing it up with an outright breakage, I thought of giving it a try with a thin screw driver. I just put it in the key slit and it dropped open in less time than even a key would take. My sisters looked agape. I myself got a shock how did it happen. The feat gave me so much confidence that I kept an eye on the lucky screw driver in case of similar emergencies. And it did arrive. A peasant woman in the locality had a star of her eyes, a huge brass and iron lock. It gave her that much of security as no God, family member or the entire police of India would give. We can say it was her first love. She was very finicky about someone getting into her house and steal away her things. But as long as the house was under the protection of her lock, she could afford to take relaxed breaths a few yards away from the door. The lock was very firm in its duty but the key turned frisky and lazy and got lost somewhere as she looked helplessly at her obedient lock. ‘Let me break open the door itself!’ a sturdy farmer was ready with a heavy iron rod. ‘We can use it to break the stones, let me try this one,’ I offered. The peasant woman always accosted me very lovingly so I thought it my duty to help her. The look in her eyes told me that she found it as much impossible as driving the earth off its trajectory with this needle. She really trusted her lock. To her it was the strongest one in the world that would need the entire village’s effort to resolve the issue. Anyway, in went my screw tip to a particular direction—I am not going to tell about the specifics because people with ulterior motives may take clues and wreak havoc in neighborhoods—and the clock dropped open. It took almost half the time she usually took with her regular key. She was rattled. Shocked and out of her wits she felt cheated by her dear lock. She stared at me with open mouth as if I was the biggest thief in the world who broke open locks almost professionally. I had to leave the scene in a hurry. After that she lost her faith in locks. ‘Locks are just to protect our homes form dogs and cats, not from…’ she would stop and spare naming me and look at me suspiciously. After that I avoided the eventuality of breaking open the locks whose keys went missing within my house a few more times. The last time the best lock in the house, a big brass one of a famous brand, tried to test my skill. The lock was defeated fair and square. ‘You seem to have a lot of these experiences in your past birth,’ my sister laughed once. I just got conscious and looked the other way.

There is a lesson here. Just because you can do something, it doesn’t mean you have to do it at any cost. What you can do is definitely important. But what you shouldn’t do is equally important. You shouldn’t open locks stealthily in the dark just because you can do that with screw drivers. Do it if someone has lost the key and is looking for some help. It applies to most of our skills, capabilities and knowledge. We have to draw a line beyond which we won’t do something even though we are capable of doing. A car without brakes, and all of accelerator, may enjoy a furious ride but it surely crashes over the precipice after a point.

So the best lock guarding the worst provisions in the house surrenders to my screw driver. The cobwebbed interior is shrieking to be relived of its load a bit. I am in lenient spirits and agree to its plight. There go the empty cartons, bottles, mugs, wires, canisters, dented utensils, stacks of newspapers and many more things. I don’t wait to haggle a kabadiwala over the things that I find a burden on the old countryside house and draw out blood from his already anemic finances. I simply pile up things in a corner in front of the house. I know one man’s trash is somebody’s treasure. The things are usually picked up within a day. But today it takes much less time. They are already here as I yet to finish disburdening my barn of the extra stuff.

It’s a pleasant surprise. They are two sweat-laden dark handsome adolescent girl kabadiwalas. Why should boys have all the fun? The girls are matching boys in the space so why should this earthly domain be for boys only. They are sorting out things with a sweet sweaty determination. Their duppatas are purposefully tied around their waists. There is a look of full mission. Their carrier rickshaw is getting loaded with the old treasure. They greet me with a smile. Hardworking girls earning their bread through diligent work is something what puts them into the orbit of divinity in my eyes. I was once so overjoyed at seeing a girl electrician in the nearby town working wholeheartedly at my voltage stabilizer that I had to give her three time the money I owed her apart from a brotherly blessing on her head, all this to justify the moisture of joy in my eyes. Coming back to these waste collecting girls, I got so overjoyed at their complete dedication to the job—most importantly, their eyes didn’t carry shame, guilt, embarrassment or any other negative complex about their job—that I had to run back again into the barn and bring out something that would of use to them at their house. I dragged out my iron folding bed, in good condition even after serving for a decade at my Delhi rented accommodation when I slogged out in the editorial departments of academic publishers. It was now retired. But it still had much more to offer to tired bodies. I put it on their carrier rickshaw with full respect and a smile. They also smile back with confidence and pride. They are not begging, they are doing a job. And a job is a job is a job. Look for bread daily but look for meaning beyond yourself also. All of us, from rag-pickers to space walkers, can view our jobs as ‘meaningful to society’. Aren’t these girls doing an amazing job for the society? They clean the surroundings and clear away things that would leave the locality stinking. So dear readers, give respect to those who are doing their job happily. I have seen smiling rag-pickers and terribly unhappy ever-frowning corporate guys in swanky buildings. My respects flow to those who do their job joyfully, taking it to mean something bigger than themselves, a kind of contribution to the larger scheme. Every task done with a happy frame of mind is a contribution beyond the limited scheme of the self. Try to fall in love with what you do, just I like the task of writing even though a few hundred copies sell and I hardly earn any money out of my writing. But it’s my Ikigai. I am at my best in feelings while I am writing. Find your Ikigai!

Silvery cords tied to the heavens

A honey buzzard lands softly on the giloy-canopied acacia clumps in front of our house. The creeper, whose juice became the staple drink of entire India during the pandemic waves, has covered the prickly trees so thoroughly as to make it impossible for the sun to kiss the ground below. During the rainy season, the creepy huge tent of the heart-shaped leaves becomes a nesting heaven for little birds like tailor birds and warblers. Since there is no honey around, the buzzard has to look for what it can find to survive instead of having a choice of honey.

There aren’t enough flowering and fruit trees to sustain honeybee nestings these days. My unkempt garden has some flowers but they are more suitable to the eyes. These can sustain a modest bee nest. However, with the arrival of monkeys even this option is ruled out for the last couple of seasons. They relish breaking things, so how can we expect the honeybees to get a discount on this.

The honey buzzard without honey is just in the name of it. I think its name will have to be changed in the absence of honey very soon. Hungry and looking for a quick breakfast, it is perched with certain discipline and acceptance of its honey-less fate and cranes it neck almost full circle, its yellow-rimmed eyes scanning the surrounding leafy table for some eatable crumbs left. It’s a majestic dark brown hawk with spotted white underside. The crows and babblers spot it. There is a huge round of abuses hurled in enthusiastic shrill at the transgressor. A squirrel is also employing her vocals to provide a prickish tik-tik-tik drumbeat to the protesting chorus. The hunter has to look somewhere else. It swoops away from the noise. I wish him a perfect lunch of honey among the trees lining the canals around the village. There are many trees there and maybe honeybees haven’t forsaken the land altogether.

The other day I missed the bee eaters, the beautiful lemon green birds who glide like tiny aircrafts. Their wings when spread out and not flapped look like that of a fighter jet. But they don’t thunder like a fighting machine. Theirs is a melodious trill-trill-trill symphony. It’s better to have a fighting attitude and calm voice. You do what you need to do without bragging or boasting about it. Most of the problems and issues of life are beyond the pale of ‘what we need to do’. They arise of our unnecessary tongue-work. In the absence of bees they are also the bee eaters just in name. But the sky is full of flying insects. I don’t think they miss bees as much as the honey buzzard misses its honey.

Dining tables give their best in a bachelor’s house. They serve multiple purposes of whom dining comes way down the list. The important functions include ironing, writing, work station of multitudinous tasks, resting place for things that fail to grab a foothold somewhere else and of course eating and having tea. To increase the range of its services, I have put it in the verandah. It’s almost a laden wagon with a little corner empty where I set my decade and half years old laptop. It works on live electricity, the battery having quitted its services a couple of years back. In any case, it’s reasonably good to meet the needs of a small time writer.

I thought the dining table has enough load to my satisfaction. There is always a scope for some more of the utility; the very same utilitarian spirit that has over-laden the earth like a creaking, complaining wagon. The potter’s wasp proves this utilitarian principle. Now, as I type I have the privilege of looking at it during breaks. The wasp-copter hovers above and lands with its mud cargo to leave a bit more of it on the mud-house. The building is coming nicely. The cavity leading to the pupa chamber is perfectly round. Every time it deposits its load, it takes a rest, facing me with arrogance, its behind twitching like a wagtail bird all the while. It’s not scared in the least, I’m sure. An almost unknown writer isn’t the one to be bothered about too much. Well, builder wasp, you are within the limits of sanity in not minding me but please mind the bee eaters. They aren’t just eating the bees as the name says. They are equally good wasp eaters also. I don’t want an unfinished house on my table. It should be complete. Even potter wasp’s mud flat is nice if it’s completed and done diligently. So make a good one and be careful as you set out again for the next round of ferrying the building material.

The doormat-kitten is plainly a greedy-kitten now. It doesn’t seem to eat for the sake of the hunger of stomach. I think the hunger in mind has taken precedence and that is quite serious. It drinks more than it can digest and recycles it to a yellowish semi-fluid in the garden which isn’t a good sight. It has to remember that I’m the least suitable to be a pet parent. I’m not looking for a pet, that’s for sure. I just want it to be a semi-feral cat that loiters around the garden for half the time within the boundary and half outside. The food also equally rationed between the domestic part and wild part. It has but put all its cards at the domestic front. The barn-kitten is perfectly fulfilling my expectations of a cat. So the broom, not used that much for its usual operations and is happy to lie in good state, may be given extra responsibility of putting the kitten fur on its back in order. If it’s a smart kitten it will get the message.

The wire-tailed swallows have beautiful molten blue swift wings that allow them to get speedy dives and change of directions. But they have weak paws. I think they don’t have this word ‘wire’ in their name just for the wires projecting behind in the tail. They are named so because they have weak paws that makes it difficult to perch on trees. They are at their restful most while perched on wires, their paws grasping the straight line and bellies supported on the line. We have our strengths and weaknesses and theirs is flying swift and sitting almost painfully, so much so that they prefer airy love-making loops while in flight. No wonder, they have such strong flying genes. A few of them are resting on the electricity wires in the street.

They seem to be witnessing something special on the electricity cable below. The cable crosses the yard. This is non-flying love-making. But it is shifty and quick. One needs to have quick eyes to spot the moment. A love-struck pair of scaled munia, drunk with the procreative spirits of the season, takes the decisive step in their courtship. It’s a beautiful chocolate colored little bird having a chessboard pattern on its breast. She is twitching its tail and crouches low in receptivity. He gets on top for a second’s worth oblivion. The would-be Ma and Pa then fly away to enjoy some more brief moments of ecstasy. Nothing wrong with brief ecstasies but they come with huge time span of responsibilities. Their commitment to their nesting duties is unfailing. And that’s what it makes it so beautiful unlike we humans who would have the most of the pleasures and avoid the resultant responsibilities. This is what breeds our agonies. Most of us are looking for maximum pleasure at the cost of least duties. No wonder, multifarious agonies abound because it’s impossible to avoid stepping on others’ toes with this approach. So dear readers, enjoy your life as per your notion of enjoyment but never shirk responsibilities befalling your way as a result.

Looking at the underused, lazy broom, having made to look at it while working my mind upon the added task to give it some job on the back fur of the greedy and still lazier cat, I am reminded of my duties also. They are related to the broom. A confession here. I don’t broom my place on a daily basis. I know if I attempt it daily, I will do a half-hearted shifty job. I want to do it thoroughly with entire focus. So I do it after certain intervals. I am not going to specify the time period between the two broom tasks because people are very judgmental and they will say something disturbing about the state of affairs. So here I set out to work with the broom.

A puppy howls painfully for a good interval of time. In their innocence, the children easily jump out into the folds of sadistic glee. Their deeds are pardonable. They are a work in progress but the elders can definitely make them realize the fact of pain to other species. It’s an important parental duty to make them understand the things like violence and pain in easy ways so that they grow up to be caring and sensitive human beings.

All species are breeding very fast in the rainy season. It would be cruel to the lizards to expect them to not do so. They have done full justice to their numbers in nice proportion to the fleas and mosquitoes. Tiny lizard babies crawl on the floor. They sometimes almost dive and are dragged along by the fleas they have pounced upon. That’s the survival matrix. You have to hide but hiding might be longer in time. It’s but very small in substance. You have to come out for the flash of a second and take our chance of food. It lasts a flashing second but in consequence it’s far more important than the long hours of hiding. All this is a rapidly shifting show. We have to grab our chances with cool deliberation. It’s always about the balance between the pause and attack. Go one way and you are done for it. Stay in pause perpetually and you are sidelined by the forces of nature of its own. Try be a jumping jack all the time on the attacking, flashing stage outdoors and you are gobbled down by someone doing the same with a bit more deliberation. So balance out your innings. Make it a harmonious blend of pause and run.

The broom dismantles a few cobwebs in the corners. How can the spiders be behind in procreation? They spin a very fine web and know the value of patience till the moment the impatient flight of some mosquito or fly lands them in webby straits. A spider evicted from its web is a piteous creature. Its long shaky legs make it look like an old stilt walker. They move lurchingly to seek new corners. I have to break the stilts of a few to maintain inter-species balance. A lizard baby also helps me in the task. It takes a bite at the long-legged spider. It looks very funny, almost clueless as to what to do afterwards as the legs pedal quite a bit. Maybe it will manage its breakfast in a very ungainly way so prefers the privacy under the wooden chest. The spider gets a new home. It’s the tiny lizard baby. There is a nice probability that the lizard baby might get a brand new home, the kitten, the barn kitten especially. The lazy one has accommodation strictly reserved for pure, creamy cow milk only.   

The rain god is indeed in very happy spirits. A passing cloud looks down and finds the unkempt garden drier than its expectation. There starts a brief spell of a very nice drizzle. The blue is visible around the cloud. Rain with sunshine is special, an intoxicating cocktail of fire and water, a coming home of the opposites. The rain drops look silvery threads drawn to tie earth to the heavens. Mother earth surely is tied to the heavens, just that we have cut most of the cords and set the heavens free for our dreams and after-life journey.

Lazy ways of a busy life

 We are definitely up for climatic upheavals. The Siberian forests are burning. Forest fires blaze for weeks in North America as well. These forest fires, within a span of few weeks, have unleashed as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as entire India does, from all sources, in a year. Mother Nature is continuously sounding the alarm signal but we have taken it for granted. So here we are busy in petty fights over business, weapons, nationalities, alliances, religion, caste, politics, race and ethnicities.  

Many rulers have gone to New York to attend the UN General Assembly session. It’s a very nice outing at the most, especially after almost two years of incarceration when they took virtual diplomatic potshots from the confines of their residences. My advice is please don’t get too excited. Take it as a nice break only. This world is far better with at-ease rulers. The moment they get agitated, it’s we subjects we bear the consequences.

The ruling Talibs of Afghanistan are feeling let down because their representative can’t enjoy a trip to the big place. I think they have a big space to maneuver their way into the international body. It needs a very little step. Appoint a woman UN representative for Afghanistan. Then watch who has the guts to deny you entry into the UN. But probably they are even more scared of the free, independent, educated Muslim women than the idol-worshipping kafirs.  

China is just round the corner of again getting angry at the United States. ‘Why do they have the entire UN headquarter to themselves? We also have nice cities and ready to host the UN sessions,’ the irritated spokesman is just about to say any day. If they don’t say this, I would compliment them for their patience and understanding.  

You just cannot enjoy the show on other’s premises, nicely smirking over the fence. The spectacles spread like wild fire, especially if the spectacle-couriers are around. There are plenty in the village now, by the way. Have you ever seen a good monkey? The term doesn’t apply to their species. At least among the rhesus monkeys you can go to the earth’s end. You will return empty handed. So the spectacles that I have been gleefully not only watching but writing also creep to my premises.

There has been a very busy rainy season this year. Even the ever-thirsty farmers are folding hands under the clouds to spare the paddy that has been sloshed to the nostrils. ‘It will drown and die!’ they plead. Water is everywhere, it’s there is puddles, massive village pond, in canals all around the village, in paddy fields, you just name it and there will be some water. So who is still crazy for water? It’s the big alpha rhesus rascal. His pride and vanity has been propped so high, after producing many dozens of tiny rascals, that it now feels itself entitled to bathe and drink A grade water. It’s a huge monkey with plenty of strength in its hands. The broken water tank lid on the roof is enough testimony to his strength. My neighbor witnessed the spectacle today just like I had witnessed his best white shirt being turned into a retirement piece. ‘After breaking the cover, he stooped down to drink some water and then jumped into it to bathe,’ he repeated the delayed telecast of the incidence.

There I stood helplessly watching the scene of crime. At the other end of the terrace, the bather shook off its fur to get into action for some more acts of the same kind. Hadn’t he growled the other day, ‘I will see you some other day!’ I should have remembered. A lot of work awaits me. The tank has to be cleaned and the cover fixed. So thinking better of saving my energies, I get to the task. What is the use of getting involved with such hooligans? They are absolutely free to be ever-busy in petty as well as big crimes.

I feel like giving in and work with a sad visage. I don’t even have the spirit left to shoo away the offender’s kid, a tiny chit of a monkey who must have clapped as its father showed him how to bathe in clean waters, took away the sole guava, which I had seen early in the morning, well hidden and promising a good tasteful bite. The rhesus brat rolled away with its eatable ball.

My pride is wounded. Why carry pride at all if it gets wounded? I reflect over this and decide to be more humble.

The peacock looks lithe and smart. It moves easily and takes longer flight to land on the terrace. It has shed its plume. The burden of love, the huge load of shiny feathers to woo ladies, gone and here it is roaming around carelessly. It seems to be enjoying the real fun of life. Gone is that tension and agitated sense of purpose. When it’s dancing with its load, it does just for the pea-hens. Now it moves around of its own. Love seems to be pretty burdensome as judged from this episode. There should a passion for life in totality. Love is just a nice part of living joyfully. And don’t be crazy about anything or anyone. I think a reasonable amount of self-love does wonders to one’s quality of life. It’s the bedrock of all other expressions of love, be it relationships, arts, hobbies, careers, everything in fact.

The jingling notes in the silverbill nest are higher now. It means the hatchlings are plumpier. The barn-kitten has fallen in love with the jingling music. It’s another matter that he wants to taste the music as well. I hope his neck doesn’t get a sprain due to continuous upward ogling. The doormat-kitten has turned lazier by several notches. There is a high risk that if I take away the bowl, he will howl himself to death. He survives by continuously looking at it. What a focus?

The neighborhood simpleton goes lumbering like a kind elephant in the street. We call him Bo. There is no rhyme and reason why he is christened as such. He is big in body and very light in head. A wonderful state to be in! He looks so relaxed! His target in life seems to be the one who smoked the most number of beedies in life. So most of the time he comes along as a rolling, rumbling steam engine puffing out smoke with the exception that he doesn’t give sparks. He has no fire, he is so cool. O yes, I remember now. He gets some odd sparks sometimes.

There is another simpleton at the other end of the village. Our simpleton gives spark the moment he sees the rival in our locality. He runs after him, remembering that the encroacher does the same if he goes to their locality. A war of turfs, I suppose. They have divided the village in two parts and rule according to their simple, easy, relaxed guidebook of life.

Bo is a class of his own. He can continue eating without realizing that one’s stomach has limits. His massive legs sometimes carry scars of injuries. He just rolls up his pyjama. That much he does, of course. The rest of the issue is handled by Mother Nature as his scars heal like elephant wounds despite the entire spoilsport played by fleas and all.

He walks with his hands crossed, not on his chest, but on his back. He is not interested to take on anything upfront by crossing hands across chest as most of the non-simple types do. He simply lazily lumbers ahead and will see through you as if you are a ghost and he hasn’t seen you. Greet him in the sweetest or the shrillest manner. It’s the same to him. He is unaffected. But he has blessed me with some rare greeting a few times as we crossed each other in the street. ‘Kya haal hai!’ he would say and move on without waiting for any return of expression. Well, he is in a league of his own, just because we don’t know much about their version of perception of the world, we call them simpletons. But who knows, maybe they are more joyful than most of us.

Bo is seen coming down the street. Wait, he gives his rare fiery spark! Is the rival from the other quarter around? He surely is around, just that it’s the red-bottomed and pink-balled rhesus alpha male. Bo takes him as a rival in his territory and throws a big piece of brick at the target. The ruffian simian jumps over and vanishes away. The brick smartly hits the street light fixed at the corner of the house. The monkey has ensured that the tiny square will go dark for a few days at least. Bo doesn’t give any reaction as I look first at him and then at the broken light and repeat the same a few times. ‘Kya haal hai?’ he graces me with his greeting. ‘Bahut badhiya,’ I say. But then he has already moved on. I am happy that big Bo has taken the monkey king as a rival. His bottom will be swollen and redder any day.

It's a wonderful life

 There was a series of vigorous clapping as I beat the air pretty hard. Fut Fut Fut, the notes cascaded like hellfire and torpedoes in mankind’s war games. Was I wildly applauding some sporty excellence? No, it was done in defense. The dengi-copter had just landed on my turf. Dengi-copters don’t fire missiles at the enemy. They draw their spears out to draw blood and inject fever that most often requires a bigger needle to undo the deed. It was a huge one, the dengi-copter. With the cases of dengue rising pretty fast, my defense batteries quickly responded just before the enemy strike after its landing on my turf. Defense missiles clapped rapidly. The main problem in being a lazy writer is that the dengi-copter is almost sure of beating your defense system. The dengi-copter dozed, dived, uplifted and turned with expert maneuvering. It flew away to safety. My palms bore the brunt of the strenuous effort. But aren’t the guns very hot after firing?

Well, they say the movement of a hand on one continent has the capacity to bring rains to some other continent. My clapping seemed to have disturbed the atmospherics somehow. The afternoon was at the threshold of evening and a strong wind built up in response to my clapping. The trees greeted the wind in obedience. Different trees have their unique styles of greeting the wind. A peepal has strong branches and supple emotional leaves—no winder they are heart shaped and shake a lot—that get easily ruffled by the winds. The riot of emotional shakings in its canopy gives the sound of a small waterfall from a distance. The stoic banyan is too sturdy both in leaves and the branch wood to be easily disturbed by the wind. It prefers to stand almost unmoved like an old mendicant in the Himalayas, his body stable, emotions in equanimity and mind without turmoil, the weather elements just moving his saggy beard a bit. A neem is pretty easy to be appeased by the touch of wind. Its branches and leaves freely dance to the windy tunes. Parijat leaves are almost metallic in strength but the wood is soft and flexible, so it shakes with a stiff neck, nodding this way and that. Monsoon-fed acacia has long slender branches that heartily flirt with the windy boys.

My vigorous round of clapping definitely disturbed the atmospheric elements. The wind pulled clouds, big wagons of cloud. Some travelled very low and fast. The trees applauded their approach. The cloudy wagons rubbed past each other and thunder and lightning reprimanded the agitated trees. The wind buffeted. It started drizzling. A group of swallows flew for fun—not for hunting dragonflies for a change—in this windy drizzle. You can very well make out the playful dives from the serious insect-hunting sorties. There is a difference between professional duties and vacations. They flew against the wind, flapped their wings dynamically, holding their positions at a shaky point for some time, then diving along an incline, now rising against the wind. When the birds decide to take a bath in a windy drizzle, it’s a sight to watch. A pigeon also flew like a drunkard, moving this way and that way. A group of three monkeys enjoyed slip-downs over inclined solar panels on the rooftop. The gently inclined wet solar panels serve a nice rooftop entertainment park for them. No problem with that. The main issue is that the rhesus monkeys hardly know the point at which their fun game changes to outright criminality against humanity. Their fun and criminality lie so close that just a leaf drop is sufficient to turn them synonymous.

The kittens barged in as if the world was up for its last moments. And so did a grasshopper. It was a grasshopper that hated bathing perhaps. It assumed it was also escaping like the kittens. The slight difference being that it was escaping from life in this instance. It landed straight in front of the barn-kitten whose arrival in the verandah was rewarded with a nice evening snack. To the doormat-kitten the life is too precious so it went into the invisible folds of the farthest hiding point. The barn-kitten but isn’t averse to have a few drops of water on its fur in lieu of munching grasshopper nutcrackers. So the grasshopper escaped to death. The kitten got a snack. The wind dropped. The trees stood silent and the wayward drizzle turned into a steady rain. The music of rain on subdued, unmoving leaves is wonderful. It seems like as if the trees have opened their soul to the rains. The rain-bathing birds called an end to their flying showers. The flirtatious clouds matured to a stable grey homogeneity. They looked settled for a good rainy spell now. The monkeys forgot their rascality and hid under the solar panels. Without their tomfoolery they look so bloody moron, sullen and sad as if the entire sorrow of the cosmos has fallen upon them.

It steadily rained till the evening stood at the threshold of a gloomy dusk. Then the clouds decided there has been enough bathing down below. They resolved to take rest. A tiny bit of pale yellow in the western sky conveyed the unseen goodbye of the setting sun. The birds that had stopped midway on their evening march to their nesting started again as they shook off their feathers and started their remaining journey to be with their near and dear ones. The monkeys came out of their sad imprisonment. They got onto the top edges of the solar panels and shook their bodies so forcefully with vengeful excitement in order to uproot the plates, failing which they moved along the parapets to look out for the things they would be able to break. The kittens also crawled out of a big empty home delivery carton and looked at the bowl. This kind of rest does wonders to their appetite. Hunger is written so vibrantly over their faces that I am reminded the same about myself. I can’t just wait like them to manage hunger. I have to go into the kitten. And a nice, gentle spell of evening cooking proceeds in a bachelor’s kitchen. Isn’t life beautiful? It surely is provided we accept it as such and learn to see its beauty and ignore the ugly.

Life under passing drizzles and shifting loafs of clouds

 Here is a bit of advice for amateur cooks who are just learning the tricks of the kitchen affairs. Never compare your cooked items with the best food that you have tasted in the genre. Compare it with the worst you ever experienced. The challenge then is only this much that you fight to save yours turning out to be the worst. In this there is more chance that you will pass the test. I do the same as I try new things in the kitchen. I usually put my product in relation to a peasant woman’s offerings. Well, they are a nice couple. They have good heart but good heart doesn’t always mean good cooking mind also. She smiles like an innocent girl but her food will challenge you at many levels. The main test is to stop your tears as her pure smile wants you to finish the thing. But then she has what many good female cooking minds don’t have, a good heart and a pure smile. Most importantly, I get a benchmark in taste, which I can very easily build upon. I manage it easily and that’s pretty encouraging.  

Carpenter ants are the elephants of the ant-world. They are big, have nice protruding pliers that can take a nice nibble at the human skin. We played a bloody game with them as kids. Put a tiny bit of saliva on its mouth, out come its fangs, ready to sink into the target. Then we would offer our skin, mostly it was the big toe. Being the bigger elder in the paw carries extra responsibility. The angry ant would then bite and sink its double weapons into the skin. The bigger and angrier ones sank it pretty deep. Then we would have our sadistic glee. Pull the ant from behind. It would snap into two. The front still sunk into the toe skin and the behind in the fingers for some childish postmortem. The insertion would then be plugged out, leaving a little trail of blood. The one who had the privilege of messing up the toe to the best extent would declare himself a winner. A pretty disturbing game, I accept. But that’s the world of boys in the farming community. They cannot have mushy teddy bears in soft beds. So they pick out carpenter ants.

Well, that was decades ago. We carry very soft skins now. Sitting on a chair and writing, I raise my foot out of the big black ant’s way as it crawls ahead. These are very sensitive times. An ant bite can spoil the entire day, so why take risk. It moves on and meets a fellow big ant coming from the other direction. They stop and snuggle up to twitch their antennas. It seems a pretty hearty gossip. They can actually identity their own kin relations from the same nest. It is a kind of chemical signal. Here they are strangers belonging to different nestings. They just move on after this brief greeting.

Big loafs of clouds are drifting across the sky’s blue. A single strand of cobweb is flying in the soft breeze. Its one end is still moored somewhere. Sunlight sends a molten wave of shiny silver cascading across this thin medium as the reflection moves up and down the thin line. Nature knows how to entertain itself.

There are plenty of flowers in the unkempt yard: Red, pink, white and yellow roses; white and lilac sadabahars: red, white and scarlet hibiscus; soft red and orange geraniums; deep red peregrina; mild indigo petunia; purple red and pink bougainvillea, gentle red of Jesus thorn; white of the pinwheel or light of the moon; and little white blooms of parijat that keep the smiles going well into the dark. They say that a fairy is born every time a flower dies. In the yard there must be plenty of fairies then. If it’s true then I request them to drive away the snakes hiding around. But maybe snakes are mere wormy playthings to the fairies. Why would they then bother the reptiles?

An unkempt yard carries multitudes of advantages for someone looking for solitude. There are little inconveniences of snakes and mice. These but can be managed with a cat. The cat itself is a big inconvenience but its disadvantages pale in comparison to a snake. A cat will irritate you, the snake, on the other hand, scares the hell out of you. The main advantage of a disheveled yard is that it carries a miniature forest kind of feeling. Birds set up their nests. There is an entire world of insects on the ground. The branches wave at you with unconditional friendliness. By the way, the beautiful greenish bee-eaters have skipped their monsoonal trip to the yard this year. Last year there were many who chucked out dragonflies midair and feasted on the branches. So the dragonflies have better times this season.  

The monkeys seem well determined to out-populate the humans. I saw simian child brides carrying babies with much effort. The big rascal is now into child marriages. The worst are the adolescent males. They pluck out mischief out of thin air. The other day, one gallant tried puppy-ride. It jumped on the back of a puppy. The latter tried to maintain its run but crashed after a few panicked gallops. It howled for a complete hour as if it had been boiled alive. The elder canines yelped and barked helplessly. Then a blacksmith gypsy arrived in the street and shouted for the sale of rudimentary sheet iron tools and utensils. The street dogs find it utterly unbearable. Forgetting the monkeys, they walk in a long trail after the wandering hawker. The victim puppy also draws out pride and walks with taut tail as part of the retinue. Having brief memories really helps them.

The lazy kitten is obsessed about the bowl. All day it looks at it and doesn’t spare licking even the empty bowl repeatedly to ensure there isn’t a single crump left to make the ants happy. I am fed up with its unrelenting demands. It needs to be taught that life doesn’t center around food only. To break its invisible magnetic chain tying it to the bowl, I have devised a mechanism. A cat hates water, even more than the dogs I suppose. So I spray water at it sometimes when it seems that the craze for the bowl is crossing all limits and it may turn a lunatic cat. It finds it scarier than even a grenade blast and shoots off to hide in the yard, another matter that it has learnt to forget it too easily and crawl out after a few minutes. After getting a mild shower it sat sullenly under the parijat tree. That’s the best I haven able to push it so far, just taking that much effort to look in the direction of a prey. High in the branches there is a soft jingling of chirps. The silverbill has her house full. It stares into the globular grassy nest, waiting for the impatient dumpling to commit the error of stepping a wing out too prematurely and tumble down on a cat’s table. A lot of them do it in fact, so cats usually wait patiently below for days on end, looking for that slight misadventure by the soft, meaty hatchling. The silverbill parents have very soft trills. The reprimanded kitten’s brother also joins in the staring game. There they eat the nest with their eyes. A tailor bird couple finds it deeply disturbing. They have tailored their nest somewhere in the lower branches. The stitched nest of three leaves is well camouflaged. But they cannot take a risk. ‘Why are you staring this way?’ they shoot back. These little creatures are well made for quarrels. They are ready for it all the time. A few babblers also join their winged brethren. Soon it’s a big brawl. The cats find it unbearable for their ears and leave in disgust.

The other day, a big-mouthed fatty male cat arrived in the yard. The bowl-licker turned on its heels and scampered into the verandah and turned invisible. The bowl is too precious, so this life has to be kept safe. The barn dweller kitten crouched more in defense, its hair upright and gave a preeny, sharp weepish growl. At least it tried to stand guard. The bigger male knows that this tiny rascal will take away his girls in future so finds him enemy. The smaller Romeo also knows that to win a girl in future it has to pass this test. All around it seems just a fight for girls across the species. The bigger rival toppled the smaller one. I stand and watch. I know exactly when to intervene. I know at what point it may turn fatal for the little cat. But before that the little one has to show that it can fight. The bigger suitor for girls is almost double in size so the smaller one rolls on its back and raises its front paws like an expert pugilist. It growls and hisses hideously and furtively throws around its punches. That’s the fighting spirit! As an underdog you fight to save your neck and give a few scratches on the opponent’s face. When was a fight decided by the body size? It’s basically in the spirits. The tiny firecracker forces the big bully to retreat. After the fight it looks pretty ruffled and roughened up. But it has shown enough spirit and willpower to remind the bully cat that his girls will have a dashing young lover very soon. The sissy bowl-lover crawls out and goes out to check his brother. He cuddles and puts his ruffled moustaches in order by affectionate licking. Well, no problem cat with the aesthetics. You love your bowl; he has his eyes already on love beyond the fence.

The major advantage of getting married in teens is that you become a grandparent in just your forties. There are many such grandparents in the village. If a grandson is born to such couples, they have enough youth in their legs to shake to bawdy Haryanvi songs in celebration. Yesterday the air shivered with loud thumps and beats of coarse music as the mammoth woofers and speakers shook the walls to match the pride and happiness of a couple that turned grandparents in just their early forties. Liquor flew freely. The Haryanvi songs created a kind of earthquake. The drunkards have such audacious lungs to even shout over the loudest music. They even out-sanitized the normal people during the pandemic. As very healthy and disciplined people fell victim to the virus, the drunkards stood well and safe surprisingly. Possibly the repeated sanitization of throats proved better than hand sanitization. They even know it. In fact they boast about it. Even the worst drunkard, nearest to death in the village, kept his shouts and drunken pouts even without a sneeze. He is still alive and kicking and drinking well. ‘And we don’t take even a single precaution like you guys!’ they boast in a condemnatory tone at the lesser non-drinking mortals. Well, that shouldn’t encourage more drinking. Living without awareness is no living at all. We have to be in our senses to enjoy our pleasures and cope up with the pains.

The suggestive, lewd gyrations of Haryanvi songs created a whirlpool of fiery passions and the drunkards raised a lot of dust in the street. After hours of merry-making, there has to be a big loud-mouthed brawl also as a kind of dessert after the main course. The expenditure on liquor seems a waste if there is no quarrel at the far end of celebrations. The quarrel serves a big purpose, without it the celebrations won’t stop. So there was a causeless brawl in which all shouted for being the worst victims of their fellow merry-makers’ worst tyranny. Here a surprise sprang up. The numero uno drunkard, who is permanently sloshed and roams the streets raising brawls with dogs, monkeys and humans in equal measure, turned stoic. Doing as others do isn’t his forte. So in the hours-long brawl his drunk voice was the only sound of sanity. He sounded like a piously drunk sage. The next day, when the rest of the humanity turned sane, he regained his lost status and raised extra ruckus in the streets as if to make up for the loss of those moments.