Storks in the sky

 It rained for almost a week in the middle of October, making it one of the wettest Octobers ever recorded. The slugs and earthworms got apprehensive whether it was the mythological deluge repeated. The ones that got scared too much headed for higher grounds towards the verandah from the garden. Then the sun shone very brightly and all their fears were belied. Now they had to retreat, at a great risk of being squashed under feet and picked up by the predators. I airlifted some of them and landed them home in the flower bed. It shows if you easily give into your fears, you expose yourself to an even broader range of risks and then salvation becomes a factor of someone’s sense of charity, or kindness, or pity.

What bigger proof do I need that winters aren’t too far than the sight of storks. It seems a beautiful world. A group of around thirty painted storks hovering in the village sky. They arrived flying in a V-shape pattern, did a few redesigned sorties, maybe reconnoitering the village pond. Sadly the water body isn’t free now. It’s tamed for fisheries with wire nettings cutting the free skies from the pond’s stretch. So they move on looking for some still free puddle. Wetlands are on a decline. But the sight of these Himalayan visitors freshens up my mood. And there is hope till the sky has enough free canvas for the birds to fly.

A simple man's financial management

 

Rashe is a soft giant. He owns huge strength, which is amply evident when he works as a wage laborer. He can lift huge weights but he is too cool in temperament to be agile. Once, after getting fully sloshed he fell faceward and being very relaxed and unhurried allowed his teeth to hit a brick without putting much effort against the fall. A free and relaxed fall we can term it. Now the door is open with three or four of his front teeth missing. This coupled with a slurred speech—the result of a horse kick during infancy, which jammed his jaw somewhat abnormally—makes him look and sound like a fresh species altogether. But he has a very keen sense of banking. He worked for me for a day for which I owe him 600 rupees. He hasn’t arrived to claim it even after a couple of weeks after the work assignment. He hasn’t any banking account, so all the people whom he considers to be honest are his bank. He keeps the money with them, postponing the settlement of his dues till the day he needs the money. ‘That saves the wastage of money,’ he provides me free financial consultancy.

The big man's little story

 

Petha is a huge man, standing at 6’4” and weighing in the range of 120s in kilogram unit. He grew to be a mammoth lad in the senior secondary school. The potential was spotted by one of his teachers. She passionately introduced him in the art and craft of pacifying the basic instinct. He may not have bothered about any other element of schooling but this lesson he has followed to the core of his body. He hasn’t looked back since then.

Ask him the biographical summary of the last two decades. He answers with the sincerity of a student, ‘I have simply come very handy for the women looking for greener pastures!' As you can very well imagine, there are countless episodes of his amorous passion. It involves the college-going girl of a minister in Djibouti, a very loyal secretary-cum-housekeeper-cum-mistress Fatima, a few nurses, teachers, college girls, peasant women and scores of ladies belonging to the trade of dousing desires.

Then in Ethiopia, he enticed the daughter of a prominent Sikh farmer—from whom he had taken some land on lease for coffee plantation—which earned him a jail term of two years. The African jail was brutal. He survived only because he had too much weight which got cut to a normal 75 kilogram after the prison brutalities. Now in India he keeps a well-oiled stock of afeem to qualify as a brutal bull in the art of passion. He is regular with four or five women apart from giving his own wife every reason to feel contended in matrimony.

What would happen if you are forever excited and high on adrenaline? After all, human system has limitations. It’s not solely made for copulation as people like Petha believe. So now he has high blood pressure. I recommend walks and jogging. But he has all the remedies in copulatory terms. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. One encounter with a luscious woman amounts to two kilometers of walking. By this equation, I walk several miles each day!’ he gives me the consultation talk about this new form of walking by simply taking tumbles in the bed. His mathematics is a clear winner, so I accept his point of view and silently move ahead on my customary walk in the solitude of countryside.

The costliest wine

 Shyam Sunder and helper Bijender are repairing cracks in our old house. One day they work till late in the evening and get a bonus of 150 rupees meant to buy a bottle of desi liquor, their main incentive for extra work. They leave happily with the prospects of boozed-up relaxed moments after the daylong hard work. The next day, during a break, they are sitting on a bench side by side. ‘What is the cost, you can imagine, of the single peg of the costliest whisky?’ I asked. I had recently read about it in the papers and since then loved flummoxing the liquor lovers by baring the surprising fact. Shyam Sunder, the head brick layer, took a long-long draught at a beedi for inspiration and seriously deliberated over the question for a minute. ‘There are very rich people around. It must be around 10,000 rupees for a peg,’ he reached the end of his imagination about the figure. Bijender, being his loyal helper, promptly seconded him. Then I informed them that the figure is 4 crore 70 lakh rupees for a single peg of Japanese whisky. It didn’t fit in anywhere in their scheme even in the wildest of imaginations. No wonder they took it as a joke. A PJ in fact that didn’t elicit even a tiny peal of laughter. But we have to understand that it’s a small world for them where big sums appear a joke. If not for this, how will they even melt their bones under inclement weather on construction sites for a daily wage as low as a few hundred rupees?

A rainbow at the day's tail end

 

A gloomy, lukewarm, overcast early October day at the fag end of autumnal corridor. A day on the fringe of all seasons. A disowned day with orphaned feeling. And the sky shedding a few tears, as if in mourning for better times and climes. Some drops of rain leaving just scarring dots on the sand. Then some solacing ray of hope at the time of sunset. The sun calls it off from official duties a few minutes past six. The clouds in the west thinned and orangish curtains cast a faded glow on the darkish grey stage to the east. A little piece of sky over the north-eastern horizon slightly parted to allow the light’s protagonist to raise a beacon of hope. A little arc of rainbow smiled. A rainbow at the end of a gloomy tale proclaiming that there is still hope, that all isn’t lost, that there will be a balmy day tomorrow, or the day afterwards, or still later. But come it will for sure. Then the sun dived further low beyond the faded orange curtain. The little arc of rainbow was gently wiped clean from the sky’s slate.

A beautiful sadly sweet phenomena above and the bustling world below. The India-South Africa cricket match happens to be one of the numerous happenings. The Africans score pretty comfortably in the first forty overs. The Indians then make a comeback, allowing the visitors hardly a run a ball in the slog overs. To we Indians, it means great performance by our bowlers. To the Africans, it means a poor show by their batters. Both have their own versions of reality. Where does truth lie in the equation? I think it’s there in the middle, balancing out both extremes—the Indians bowled well, but the Africans batted poorly also. Doesn’t each of them support the other for its validation? The loser helps the winner in its victory; the winner also facilitates the loser’s defeat.